Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

India has just finished its campaign at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, with a total of 107 medals, its biggest-ever haul at a single edition. Out of the 28 gold medals won, 9 were bagged by women/women’s teams and 1 mixed team. Similarly, out of the 38 silver medals won by Indian players, 17 were won by women (teams) and 2 mixed teams and among the players winning the 41 bronze medals 19 were women or women’s teams and 2 mixed teams.

Meera Mukherjee was a sculptor from India who was known for her innovative bronze casting technique which she learnt from the Bastar sculpting tradition of Chhattisgarh. The book traces her journey from her childhood days and presents a glimpse of the artist’s life and pursuit for sculpting.

This book gives wings to a child’s wishes. They imagine themselves to be a number of things apart from what they already are. We see quite a range in these imaginations, for instance, a cup of tea, atwelve-armed octopus, a sneeze, a tadpole’s tongue, a question mark, a smelly sock…and many many more.

This is a good introduction to the celebrated vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar and a story about how her recording of Raga Bhairavi ‘Jaat Kahan Ho’ was included in a disc that was sent into space.

What could be more exciting than a book filled with vivid illustrations? A book where the pictures pop to life right from the pages! What if I tell you that there’s a pop-up book wherein you can incorporate both light and sound into your storytelling? The book published by Pratyush Gupta, an interactive pop-up book for children (and grown-ups alike), not only takes readers on a captivating adventure but also serves as a bridge to the enchanting world of Indian classical music.

Biography is an evergreen genre. The urge to know about famous people’s lives seems fairly insatiable as can be seen from any major publisher’s list. And yet, these slim books by Lavanya Karthik manage to stand out, for they deal not with the great glories of the famous persons they are about but with small occasions from their childhood that sowed the seeds for the direction their lives would take in the future. Each story is crafted from the perspective of the child that was.

When the list of books for review for TBR 2023 was shared, the title of this book attracted me, as this is a biography and I love reading them! Secondly, there are many books written on the life of Milkha Singh and I was curious to see how one written for children would present the life of this iconic athlete.

Humour with Mario Miranda is a picture book thick in board page format. The text focuses on Mario’s growing up years and the themes in his art. Mario was fascinated by the everyday characters he encountered, life and its traits, families and cityscapes. Like other texts from the Learning to Be series, this book is a biography in fragments.

Out In the Moonlight is the adaptation of a chapter from noted Tamil author Perumal Murugan’s book Thondra Thunai, published in the English language as Amma.

What can a single woman do on her own? The question can also be posed as ‘can a single human do anything significant by themselves after all.’ The story of Jamuna Tudu is one such tale. Lavanya Karthik has presented Jamuna’s story in a very interesting manner.

Set in the ubiquitous apartment complex peppering our cities, The Great Poop War story revolves around a mystery pooper in Skyline Apartments.

The title caught my eye! So did the theme of the book when I read the blurb. Excitedly, I started the book. Written for fluent readers and young adolescents this has imagined stories and real-life events, brought to us by 15 authors, all carrying their own charm of storytelling.

This book is the outcome of a residency programme for playwrights in 2021 through a collaboration of ThinkArts, Parag and Eklavya. The unintended backdrop of this residency was the Covid 19 pandemic, so it is not surprising that the subject of these two plays has a sense of urgency to reimagine how our relationship to nature could be reordered.

These scenes take place in the opening chapters of The Treasure of the Khasi Hills, a story written by the renowned Bengali author, Hemendra Kumar Roy. It was first published in 1930 as Jawkher Dhawn meaning ‘The Yaksha’s Treasure’.

Aaah! Lizard’, was my expression when I saw one in the kitchen. But as I kept looking at it, I observed it looking at the fruit flies and that brought about a realization for me: It was there because of those fruit flies hanging around my food peels bin near the kitchen sink. After I ate my food, the flies had found their food and the lizard found its in turn.

Deepa Agarwal’s Traveller’s Ghost is the story of three teenagers—Kriti, Mohit and the journalist Neel Pargat. The story starts in the hilly town of Banari where the families have gone for a holiday.

Festival: the very word conjures up images of good food and new clothes. And yet, whose is the celebration? What does a festival mean to the dispossessed, the marginalized? Bama’s Pongal takes this head on, with the very first sentence, ‘Pongal after Pongal, Madasami would pay his respects to his landlord and do whatever he had to, as tradition demanded.

Twelve-year-old Nimmi Daruwala is not an outdoorsy person. However, Mr Bakshi, the ‘kind and enthusiastic’ Principal of Vidya World School, decides that a Team Building Camp would be the best way to launch the school year for troublesome Grade 7.

Many of the stories in this collection are designed to attract young readers, including the reluctant reader! The humorous story that gives the book its title, ‘The Ghost who Played Tennis’ by Santhini Govindan, opens with the tantalizing statement, ‘Shankar did not believe in ghosts until he met one.’

Boom Boom is the story of Sura, a young boy living with his mother in Velankanni in Nagapattinam. He spends his days selling stickers at the Velankanni Church, playing with his friends, and climbing coconut trees.