The book cover has all the characters cheekily welcoming the reader to explore the wonderful book together, they are well aware that the reader is in for a surprise.
With an amazing concept and creative as well as colorful illustrations, this picture book is well worthy of all the awards and recognitions coming its way. The illustrations have very innovatively played around with the many words with ‘bb’/‘ee’ sound in the end. One sets out to read the story with a certain expectation of word play being involved but Farah Azeez and Rajiv Eipe’s collaborative efforts surpass this expectation. The duo moves back and forth between words in both the Hindi and English language.
The many mischiefs of ‘ee’ will have one looking for more such word-plays in their vocabulary. Such explorations allow the reader to break down the constructed perspectives towards language, and aid in building fresh ones— all the while being entertained to their wits’ end. The reader will not be able to figure it all out in one reading and will definitely need to pick the book a number of times to get through all the cues.
One of the illustrations has prisoners coming out of a life-sized jelly! This bizarre image makes complete sense after one reads the story. The illustrations are able to carry the story so well that it makes one wonder what the story would have looked like without them. The story and the fun had to end somewhere, tying it all together with the theme of gender-fluidity— which was a bit out of the blue, but might further enhance the scope of engagement with readers around the topic.