Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The story of Climate Change and its impact is not very old. It is a by-product of our development in recent years. However, the debate around it and the issues related to it are reduced to sloganeering and jargons in the developed world community.

A few weeks ago in Himachal Pradesh, this year’s monsoon flooded towns and swelled rivers, causing buildings and bridges to collapse, entire mountain sides to cave in, and cars and concrete structures to be washed away in an angry, muddy, and swollen Beas. It was a harrowing reminder of what we humans do to the land we live on.

Board books are one of the first ways in which a baby encounters printed words. It’s through these books that a fundamental journey of decoding, and making meaning begins. Board books with their sensory experience of touch, visual contrast and animation, bring joy and excitement to a child’s learning experience.

Reading Wild Treasures & Adventures: A Forester’s Diary feels like stepping into the cosy home of one of your parent’s friends, who has the most captivating profession.

The Adventures of Sirdar is an interesting story about the life of a herd of wild elephants. It begins with the dramatic selection of ‘Sirdar’, a thirty year-old male elephant as the youngest leader of the herd and his life from then on. The author, Dhan Gopal Mukherji, describes how Sirdar leads his herd.

The forest department wanted to capture Lightning Tusker. But he is no ordinary tusker, and the most experienced experts are summoned to do the job. And at the end of this insufferable 107-page novel, they fail. This novel could not have been more than 20,000 words but I struggled to finish it.

A freely roaming centipede in the bathroom or a happy family of lice in our hair is the stuff of nightmares and feverish dreams. In horror, we often ask, ‘Why on earth do we need a mosquito?’ As it is with mother nature, there is always an answer. Turns out, there would be no life on earth without these seemingly disgusting and terrifying little beings. Biologist and Naturalist EO Wilson rightfully called them, ‘the little things that run the world’.

All of 16 pages, this children’s book is one that must find its rightful place in every library across schools and homes. It is appropriately narrated without any purple prose, and it is about big, old and ancient trees. No poem has a single unnecessary description and the message conveyed is deep to arouse the child’s curious mind.
The tile itself is an invitation to the child, as well as the reading and thinking adult, to move away from the obvious. Trees surround us, many of us have seen saplings grow into trees that today provide shade and comfort during summer months, and yet, few of us have the time to think about trees more deeply.

The book gives us a window into Jaishree’s world—both professional and a bit of personal. As a child, she was sensitive, loved climbing up trees and being close to plants and nature in her grandmother’s garden. Even after growing up, she fondly remembers a tree that was her ‘friend’.

How much do we know about the trees in our surroundings? Strange Trees may make you ask this question and look around. Set during a school summer vacation in the fictional Suryanagar village, this book explores the interdependent lives of trees, birds, animals, and humans.

The dominant colour for the book cover, green, sets the tone for the book. The illustrations and the text do a fabulous tango together, bringing alive the world of plants for young readers.

Every year the State of Assam loses large tracts of land to yearly floods and land erosion. Lakhs are displaced and loss of property is on a large scale. Many have witnessed the vanishing of their home and hearth in the middle of the mighty Brahmaputra. Many are forced to live in relief camps while others are compelled to search for newer habitats. This mobile impermanent life is a lived reality for thousands of families in Assam.

The central plot of the story revolves around eliminating the hunters from the Zohor Kingdom and having good triumph over evil. Math has woven the story in such a seamless way that the reader, until the very end, is left wondering, ‘How does Harry know things about Othelia?’ ‘How are their worlds interconnected?’ and so on. The reader is expected to pick up on hints throughout the story, which makes the book engaging and fun.

Our Constitution, Our People by Harsh Mander is a timely and insightful introduction to the Indian Constitution, designed specifically for the young. The book successfully distils the essence of the Indian Constitution, making it easily accessible without being pedantic.

Birsa soon returned to Chalkhad and began to speak to the villagers. He emerged as a spiritual leader who spoke about social reforms. People began to listen to him and to believe in him. They flocked to hear him and soon he came to be called ‘dharti aba’, father of the earth. Birsa’s popularity alarmed the British.

Our Library is a visual treat, with each page unfolding a different facet of the space and people’s relationships with and within it. This library is not a quiet, didactic space of surly adults who hush the young readers; instead it’s a space of whooshing, tumbling, chattering and laughing. It’s a library that belongs to its young readers, i.e., in a true sense–‘our’ library, since the young readers form the main cast of this book with adults who help them, sometimes make reading tables, sometimes make quiet reading dens, and other times translate books to make them more accessible.

For those not familiar with Grace Banu, she is a Tamil Nadu-based transgender and anti-caste rights activist, who fought and won the case for getting the transgender community the right to study medicine like any other student. Her life is a true illustration of grit, determination and courage to challenge the gender and caste biases that still exist in our society. This storybook has been made very creatively, with the illustrations and text being in complete sync.

The book under review is a sweet interaction between the past and the present. The book takes the reader through the cultural and historical on sweets popular in various parts of India. The diversity of sweets in their varied shapes and textures together prepare each chapter with a historical base topped with its present understanding and existence and then generously sprinkled with the recipe towards the conclusion of the chapter.

Homeless, a memoir, is a book about a young woman struggling with coming to terms with the complexity of her life. Although how much of it is autobiographical has not been clearly mentioned in the book,

Imagine one morning you find a spacecraft (belonging to 3023) landing in your back garden. What would you do? You may start with some hypothesis and try to figure out what this is. You may try to open the doors with the tools you have. Understanding Autism is also like that.