The story by Katie Bagli is about the breeding behaviour of whistling ducks woven in the form of a fictional tale. A style quite suitable for the intended readers. This is a book about animals that talks about them in an environment most of us are familiar with and in which we see most of our wildlife—our homes, neighbourhoods and their edges adjoining natural habitats.
I looked again at the transparent spokes of the wheel and this time I saw the sand slipping along the spoke, one grain at a time, and suddenly I realized that these four spokes were actually two hourglasses, with a narrowed section in the middle.
Both by Sanjiv Jaiswal ‘Sanjay’. Translated from Hindi into English by Navin Menon. Illustrations by Ankur Mitra. Edited by Kusumlata Singh.
The original Hindi title won a prize in the Category Concept Booksin the Competition for Children’s Books in Hindi organized by CBT.
By Mohammad Arsha Khan. Translated from Hindi into English by Navin Menon. Illustrations by Shashi Shetye. Edited by Kusumlata Singh
Chalo Nahaane Chalein won the Second Prize in the Read-Aloud Category in the Competition for Children’s Books in Hindi organized by CBT.
By Amitabj Shankar Roy Choudhury. Translated from Hindi into English by Navin Menon. Illustrations by Shivani. Edited by Kusumlata Singh
Man ki Gaadi published under the new title Dhruv ki Gaadi won the Second Prize in the Category Social Emotional Learning in the Competition for Children’s Books in Hindi organized by CBT.
By Renuka Vishwanathan. Illustrations by Ankur Mitra. Translated from English into Hindi by Kusumlata Singh. Edited by Navin Menon
The Donkey, The Ghouls and the Magic Shawl won the Second Prize in the Category Get Ready for a Magical Time in the Competition for Children’s Books organized by CBT.
By Cheryl Rao. Illustrated by R. Ashish Bagchi. Translated from English into Hindi and edited by Navin Menon
The Shark that couldn’t Bite by Cheryl Rao won a prize in the category Read-Aloud Books/Picture Books in the Competition for Children’s Books organized by CBT.
By Mamta Naini. Illustrations by Sanket Pethkar. Hindi Layout by Puja K. Menon.Translated from the original English by Sushil Joshi. Edited by Seema
2023
Aayi Aur Mein is the story of a girl whose mother has been hospitalized for a while and what her thoughts and emotions are on the day of her home coming. The girl and her dog Nimki are eagerly looking out of the window waiting for that moment.
A group of young boys also comes there daily as darkness creeps in. They practice their Rap songs ignoring Zara’s presence; so she is able to sit there by herself. But this doesn’t last since, one evening she finds her old school crafts teacher opening the gate and coming in to sit on the bench. Zara is not pleased at this because she is a talkative lady who keeps up a steady chatter.
A simple but interesting story that children are sure to enjoy.
Will Meenu Cry? is a bilingual book written both in English and Hindi (Kya Meenu Royegi) as a read aloud book. The author has very imaginatively created the story of a child who cries daily while her working mother takes her to school.
2023
In different parts of the country, various outdoor and indoor games are played. And all of them have something common in them. And that is a tune and a beat—of fun and frolic, of laughter, of rhythm, of the inherent pace and of music. This erupts from within children.
2023
Jacinta’s Diary brings together a collection of tales of travel through tribal areas of Jharkhand, the Niyamgiri Hills and adjacent areas of Odisha.
Sadhu aur Jadugar received the first prize in the category of ‘Jadu Bhari Kahania’ in the Hindi Children’s Literature Competition organized by the Children’s Book trust.
Words have the unique ability to transcend time, space and geographies—with the written word especially; this was evident at a recent exhibition held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, titled ‘Evam Vadati Pustakam:So Says the Book’ to showcase select manuscripts from South Asia covering a rich and varied field.
2022
In this grim tale of the murder of a child, peahens and peacocks burst forth unexpectedly from the scrub and sail up into trees in the farmlands around Delhi not to add colour and variety, but because that is exactly what they do, heedless of the high voltage tensions in human dramas. There isn’t one extra unnecessary word in this novel, no self-indulgent lyricism to showcase the eloquence of the writer. The magnificent river flows through the words, however, making it lush ‘with watery dreams and silted nightmares.
2022
Dictionaries define half-blood in various ways: to denote degrees of separation in consanguineous relationships, as well as to describe social hierarchies pertaining to the pejorative epithet used for someone who is marginalized for not being racially ‘pure’.
Everything the Light Touches is a quiet book. Very quiet. It has time-travelled from another world into the twenty-first century, where fiction often tries to match the breathless pace of action cinema in order to stay in the ring, as it were. Quiet is not the same as slow, though the narrative is not fast-paced. Quiet is restful, quiet is calm, and there is something deeply assured and assuring about the place of things that the light touches
While the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall moved some of the stereotypical goalposts and challengedbinarieswhich were intrinsic to the genre, the spy continued to be what has been called ‘one of our favourite mythical heroes’ in an increasingly complex and conflicted world.
2022
Udayan Mukherjee’s successive works of fiction have a wider and wider canvas. His first novel, Dark Circles (2018) had a focus on a dysfunctional family: the mother goes away to live in an ashram, leaving behind her two sons, a twelve-year-old and a six-year-old. Mukherjee’s second novel, A Death in the Himalayas (2019), is a well-plotted murder mystery