Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This is a short story by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan about the friendship between Afghan traders and the local buyers. This reminds us of ‘Kabuliwala’, a story by Rabindranath Tagore. In an era gone by individual traders from Afghanistan would come to India to sell their goods from house to house. In this case, it is heeng. These traders or hawkers miss their home and children, whom they had left behind.

In Misfit Madhu, Anand has narrated the tale of a grade 7 student, Madhu, who has a penchant for coding. She develops an app that helps school students swap their belongings. The story goes on to talk about the mini adventures of Madhu in the ensuing months. In narrating this tale, the storyline covers many dimensions of the psychosocial world of contemporary pre-teens.

Ammu’s Bottle Boat follows a plastic bottle boat on its way from Ammu’s hands to the sea, and the guts of various animals. Written in rhyme by Niveditha Subramaiam, the story narrates the grim reality of how plastic is ubiquitous and harmful to the world.

What makes a modern woman? To Sangita Jogi, a modern woman pursues her own desires, is fashionable, and won’t get married unless she has a sense of self-fulfillment. In her book, The Women I Could Be, Jogi explores her idea of a modern woman in the art style passed down from her parents.

As soon as I read the title of the book, I felt a certain excitement about the story. The title clarified that I was picking up a challenging and unconventional theme. There exists a significant dearth of stories about LGBTQI+ characters in children’s literature as it is left off as an uncomfortable topic

Mountains have been shrouded in mystique since time immemorial. They are loved for their beauty and revered for being bountiful providers of water, food and energy. The sheer physical challenge they present to those trying to scale them commands respect! In Up the Mountains of India, they come alive with Mala Kumar’s lucid writing!

That Year at Manikoil is part of a series named ‘Songs of Freedom’ launched by Duckbill Books in the year of India’s 75th year of Independence. It seeks to explore the lives of children across India during the struggle for Independence.

I cannot understand what they are fighting for–the MNF rebels. I am perfectly fine with the way things are; I cannot imagine what more freedom I need. Sometimes, I feel that people ask for too much.’When Blackbirds Fly starts off as a simple story seen through a child’s eyes

History lessons in school can be pretty boring for 10-year-olds, with their rigmarole of dates, names of battles and rulers to contend with. They can be quite confusing and meaningless as well, for history happened a long time ago! Even something like India’s freedom movement can become a part of the very hazy past. The same events seen in the form of a story become so much more memorable and interesting for young readers.

An interesting title, and on the face of it this book is all about a cooking club in Chowpatty, Mumbai. However, the title turns out to be rather misleading, for here is a story of India’s freedom movement as told by 10-year-old Sakina in the form of diary entries in 1942. Set in Mumbai within sprawling Parsi and Muslim households, the idea of fighting for freedom is fast gaining ground with Gandhiji’s Quit India movement.

I must begin by saying that I loved this book. Name Place Animal Thing is about growing up as a Khasi girl in the ever politically-charged Shillong. It is a book of connected stories rather than a novel or novella (as the inner cover describes it), the stories connected by the first-person narrator referred to as D. The stories are told by an adult narrator who is recollecting her past, her childhood and young adulthood.

The story takes off on the school terrace with a young student manipulating a surveillance drone that captures a deadly secret of missing children and a shadowy figure known only as the Dragon. Two teenagers, April, a resident of Imphal and Shalini from the mainland living there with her father, an army man, jump into the plot to unravel the secrets running below the surface of this land, confronted at the onset, with the disappearance of a bright young boy handling the drone

A story imagined in the backdrop of World War II and India’s Freedom Struggle. The protagonist of the story is a 16-year-old girl, Kayal. The story unravels as she maintains a journal to record her journey from her orthodox home in Madras to the war camp of Netaji’s Azad Hind Fauj in Burma and beyond. It is all about how the life of this school-going teen, with a patriotic fervour, takes a sudden turn when she leaves the traditional home of her parents who are all set to marry her off to 18-year-old Shiva.

Chatur Chanakya vs the World Wide Web is the sequel to Radhakrishnan Pillai’s first delightful book, Chatur Chanakya and the Himalayan Problem, which introduced readers to the Super Six gang of Ganesh colony including Chanakya, the pale, slender and rather unlikely hero.

Amma, Take Me to the Taj Mahal is the latest addition to the ‘Amma Take Me’ series written by Bhakti Mathur. In the earlier books Amma took her two sons to the Golden Temple, Tirupathi, Dargah of Salim Chishti and Shirdi. As the author, Bhakti Mathur, says in her introductory note, ‘The series is an attempt to introduce children to the places of historical interest and different faiths in India

Friendship isn’t dictated by logic or form—it just is.’  This powerful quote encapsulates the conundrum in Chitra Soundar’s delightful and adventurous tale that is inspired by her own childhood in Chennai and a young girl’s anxiety of moving countries and searching for a new friend.

Heroes the Colour of Dust by Amit Majmudar is a book on the Dandi Salt March told from the perspective of sparrows. The story follows Blatherquill, Thunderpuff, and other sparrows, as they stop a couple of Britishers (and a mutt) from derailing the march.

An anthology of 12 teenage stories, this book covers topics like online dating, bullying, child marriage, and more. Each narrator shares a story that means something to them. Life lessons and experiences are compiled together and are easily immersible with illustrations by Ajanta Guhathakurta.

The story revolves around the town of Thapoli and its shenanigans around cricket. The search for an umpire, the match and the climax and the hero setting an example to follow are the focus area of the story.Cricket, which is seen as a man’s game with lots of complicated rules and regulations, is made easy for everybody to understand, using simple language and beautiful narration of the Thapoli town, and how Thapoli Ashes become the carnival of its kind for the town.

Abbu Khan ki Bakri is a timeless tale written by the third President of India Dr. Zakir Hussain, who has written many stories for children. Dr. Zakir Hussain was born in 1897. The story, reflecting those times, is about the situation of slavery, the pain of bondage and the frustration and struggles for freedom. The story takes us to a Himalayan village of Almora where Abbu Khan resides. He rears goats and sheep with care.