Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Bhakti Mathur has taken young readers…

The Mahabharata has been…

Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta…

Among the many firsts of childhood,…

I remember picking up Roopa Pai’s…

As the title suggests, Shruti Rao…

For many of us who were teenagers…

In the world where science…

The book is an extraordinary…

When a child thinks of a king,…

This slim volume takes us on…

This little book has…

Devika Rangachari, the well-known…

This book is a part of the series…

History has earned the partly-deserved…

If there is one subject that evokes strong feelings for any student, it is Mathematics. Simply uttering the word ‘Maths’ is enough for someone to claim that they love the subject or more often, how much they hated Maths in school. But irrespective of one’s attitude towards Maths, Tales from The History of Mathematics by Archana Sarat is a book that will appeal to readers of all ages and preferences.

This story is about fifteen-year-old Rohan (Bozo) and sixteen-year-old Nita (Chick), who love fun and adventure and are patriotic to the core. Along with another friend, Aslam, they live in Dubash Mansions, known as Bedlam House. The owners of the building are Dr. Dubash, a child specialist and his wife Mridula who is a dog trainer and runs an NGO. The childless Dubashs are very affectionate and caring towards the children.

Year of the Weeds by Siddhartha Sarma is a modern-day parable. This Young Adult (YA) novel has a deeply affective register such that it neither underplays nor overcompensates for its political and social understanding and representations. It would not be an exaggeration to call the novel a sociological fiction in terms of its tenor and treatment of the little biographies of the characters in the novel.

Radha Viswanath’s Ashtamahishi: The Eight Wives of Krishna is a work of religious fiction, a genre that along with mythological fiction is seeing a major revival. A number of writers are choosing to return to the epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and retell them from feminist or subaltern perspectives and enabling us to hear the stories of characters that have been silenced.

For the longest time there has been an invisible line, an unwritten rule that prevents writing meant for young readers from straying too far into the unknown and by extension, the ‘unsuitable’. The Other: Stories of Difference by Paro Anand is a collection of short narratives that aims to bring to light the experiences of those who lurk at our society’s margins. Anand dares to take her young adult readers down a dark path to the far reaches of society, which in reality aren’t that far from the realities of everyday adolescent life.