Books For Beginners

My loot this year from the Children’s Special November issue of The Book Review is a set of three hOle books from Duckbill! ‘Grow up,’ you might say, but I simply love to wriggle back through these holes and remain holed up to read what the young readers will enjoy. Let’s get a peep.

This time, the ever imaginative Timmi is back with a friend—Rizu. Though Timmi is a year and a class older than Rizu who studies in class 1B, the friendship flowers in the middle of many odds. Timmi finds Rizu lying on the school ground one day, staring at the sky. Is he looking for Timmi’s missing bus driver up in the sky? Or is he…? But Timmi is puzzled. Why is it that Rizu always moves one step ahead to forge a friendship and jumps three steps back—like a scared mouse? Why is the small boy with curls falling over his face always in a hurry to go away? Unlike Timmi, why is he always so unsure? Who are these three boys who keep calling him ‘Butterball’ and why? As Timmi is gradually welcomed into Rizu’s lonely world of being bullied and tagged, the two children as well as Timmi’s imaginative friends—Idli-amma and Juju, together work out strategies to tackle the bullies. Meeting Chintu—the cat—albeit breezily, was fun too!

Timmi and Rizu is just the book for every young child and every parent of every young child. Have you heard of classroom and school alley bullying? Have you as a parent ever thought of finding out what your child may be going through being bullied by some rough ones in class, or more worrying still, may be one of the bullying gang roughening up some soft spot in class? Shals Mahajan takes us into the world of young children, their secrets, their likes and dislikes, their fears and fantasies. Her writing shapes the characters deftly and caringly, and Shreya Sen’s humourously lively illustrations adds a zing to the book.

The book is also full of surprises. Be it the driving of the school bus by Ms D’Silva when the driver disappears one day, or the appearance of Rizu’s mother—looking beautiful in a wheel-chair with a champa flower tucked in her hair, or the fact that Rizu loves his kathak classes—Mahajan makes a fair attempt to break stereotypes, and does so with elegant writing prowess. Just in case you haven’t read it, do grab a copy of this book as well as its prequel—Timmi in Tangles.

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