Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The cover of Lakshadweep Adventure is certainly very colourful and appealing—it shows a youngster snorkeling amidst bright coral and fish, in deep blue waters. And within its pages, it aims to introduce a beautiful coral island chain: Lakshadweep.

In ancient times, the Chinese said that ‘at the time of inspiration’, the poet flew from one world to another, ‘riding on dragons’. This sudden great flight or leaping up out of the conscious world of rational perception into the fantastic realms of the subconscious is what gives good poetry its peculiar force and its fascinating charm…

Vikram, Aditya and Chitra are the key protagonists of Deepak Dalal’s adventure series. Inspired by adventure series like Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, these three teenagers get involved in incidents where there is a mystery awaiting to be solved.

Deepak Dalal’s Vikram Aditya series, of which The Snow Leopard forms a part, are a truly delightful addition to literature for children written in India. C.S Lewis once remarked that a ‘a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.’

This is a study that attempts to deal with too many topics. Although there is much to the argument that an under­standing of the current international system presupposes a knowledge of his­tory, Chatterjee has put together an incoherent mixture of ideas…

How did story come to be born? The stories in this collection show how, overarmed by the forces of nature and strange and mysterious natural phenomena, early man invented stories to explain everything—lightning and thunder, the sun, the moon and the Milky Way birds and beasts and forests.

Vibrant colors and a quirky illustration of a pink monster with autorickshaw horns, draws you in. Flip through the book to assess it, and the Indian names gladden your heart. Ah! A children’s book set in an Indian scenario. Awesome. Anushka Ravishankar does a great job of narrating the interesting incidents in Moin’s life as he deals with the ownership of a monster.

Remember all those Enid Blyton stories that you used to love? You’d grab a Famous Five or Five Find-Outers mystery, and retire to a corner, engrossed in the adventures of Julian and George, or Fatty and Bets, laughing or gasping alternatively as they went rootling into crumbling houses, discovered secret passages or were caught by the local policeman.

The book under review is a reprint, with a short editorial introduction, of Wickenden’s Report on the Disturbances of 1942-43. This secret document from the old files of the British Government has been published for the first time, since this ‘important’ document, accor­ding to the editor ‘remains unutilized by scholars and historians of Indian Free­dom struggle’…

Do not be misled by the title. Being tone deaf, I approached the book with trepidation and was relieved that the ‘Lu Quartet’ is no music band. It comprises four school girls—Kakoli Chakrabarty (Kalu), Malabika Majumdar (Malu), Bulbuli Sen (Bulu) and the raconteur, Tultuli Basu (Tulu)—collectively known as Gadalu or with the more grand sobriquet—The Lu Quartet.

Ranjit Lal has a charming, humorous and wacky style of writing which immediately catches the reader’s attention. His articles, especially on birds and pets have endeared him to many, including this author, who enjoys all that is written by him. I was therefore keen to read this latest book for children and I must say I was not disappointed. It is an impossible story, of course, set as it is in a grand castle in today’s India, with all the trappings of a royal habitat. One of the protagonists is a real princess, Zafira, who makes friends with ordinary girls, including a boy, from ordinary, professional families.

Animal Antics by Priyamvada is a collection of 26 poems about different animals and birds from various parts of the world. Priyamvada has dealt with the animal kingdom of Australia, Africa, South American, India, China, Sumatra and Borneo, South Asia as well as the open seas.

One of the most helpful conceptual tools for taking up the study of any cul­ture, so that the basic orientation of its ethos will be immediately understood and will illuminate the further study of the facets, is Piterim Sorokin’s categori­zation. In the ideational culture, temp­oral existence…

Two years ago, when there was a dearth of coming-of-age novels for Indian children, along came Tulika’s Mayil Will Not Be Quiet—like summer rain on parched earth.

Suzanne Sangi’s Facebook Phantom has taken the popular teenage concept of ‘Facebook-stalking’ to a completely new level.

In any civilized society, when fathers and trusted guardians turn sexual predators,when horrific incidents of rape and sexual abuse of minors hit newspaper headlines with alarming frequency, when hospitals, schools and even school buses are not the safe havens we imagine, have we then touched rock bottom—the nadir of this kalyug? In such grim times it becomes imperative for children of every age to be aware of their personal safety, to be able to protect themselves even within the close family unit. Smitten, Ranjit Lal’s latest novel for young teenagers, dares to tackle this concern which is traditionally one of the great taboos in our society.

The popular game Angry Birds has the user side with the enraged avian, choreographing its kamikaze attempt to raze down a structure put up by pigs, who have presumably pilfered the protagonist’s eggs.

Reading Zombiestan is like watching a slick Hollywood action thriller that has all the right elements going for it—the ever popular war against terror, a bit of romance, some coming of age, lots of guns, and heroic sacrifice.

Alice would not have been surprised to find herself in this apocalyptic war zone teeming with ruined cities and mutants.

A Cultural History of India is a series of articles by some well-known historians, archaeologists and linguists. In this volume they have made a critical appre­ciation of India’s cultural life from the earliest times to the present day and packed it with information on a variety of subjects…