Enchanting Read

I’ve read To Market, To Market! greedily for the fourth time, absolutely delighted with the beautiful illustrations, but also because I couldn’t really remember the text terribly well the first time around. To Market…is undoubtedly a wonderful work visually, but I found myself thinking, at various points, as I looked both at the illustrations and the text, that this is exactly the sort of exoticized image of ‘India’ that I am so afraid of seeing! The ‘rural market’ scenario, with the traditionally set stalls and wares are charming, but carry the same Malgudi whiff of unreality and reinforce a lot of the old stereotypes. The first bit of the story, when the little girl is thinking of all the things she could buy is informative and endearing, but as the scene progresses it becomes a very specific kind of market, and a specific kind of child;