A few weeks ago in Himachal Pradesh, this year’s monsoon flooded towns and swelled rivers, causing buildings and bridges to collapse, entire mountain sides to cave in, and cars and concrete structures to be washed away in an angry, muddy, and swollen Beas. It was a harrowing reminder of what we humans do to the land we live on.
Board books are one of the first ways in which a baby encounters printed words. It’s through these books that a fundamental journey of decoding, and making meaning begins. Board books with their sensory experience of touch, visual contrast and animation, bring joy and excitement to a child’s learning experience.
Reading Wild Treasures & Adventures: A Forester’s Diary feels like stepping into the cosy home of one of your parent’s friends, who has the most captivating profession.
The Adventures of Sirdar is an interesting story about the life of a herd of wild elephants. It begins with the dramatic selection of ‘Sirdar’, a thirty year-old male elephant as the youngest leader of the herd and his life from then on. The author, Dhan Gopal Mukherji, describes how Sirdar leads his herd.
The forest department wanted to capture Lightning Tusker. But he is no ordinary tusker, and the most experienced experts are summoned to do the job. And at the end of this insufferable 107-page novel, they fail. This novel could not have been more than 20,000 words but I struggled to finish it.
A freely roaming centipede in the bathroom or a happy family of lice in our hair is the stuff of nightmares and feverish dreams. In horror, we often ask, ‘Why on earth do we need a mosquito?’ As it is with mother nature, there is always an answer. Turns out, there would be no life on earth without these seemingly disgusting and terrifying little beings. Biologist and Naturalist EO Wilson rightfully called them, ‘the little things that run the world’.