News

‘It is day 7 of the lockdown and everyone says the skies are blue again.’This is the first sentence of Jamlo Walks, spread over two pages against a blue backdrop, a calendar with the dates from the 24th to the 30th of March crossed out, and a few leaves of an indoor plant beside a window looking out into a blue sky with some wispy clouds.

Isn’t it a fascinating sight to see a one or two-year-old mimicking the elders of the house in the way they talk on the phone or take a dupatta (scarf) across their shoulders? A student in my school similarly tries her hand at impersonating the way her library teacher reads aloud stories in class. She takes a similar tone, attempts pauses, and waits for a reaction from her audience just like the teacher does while reading a story with them.

Pinkoo Shergill has a longstanding dream that grows bigger and bigger till it fills his head and he can think of nothing else. It’s all about what he dreams to be…An astronaut? A fire engine driver? Spiderman? No! He wants to be the greatest pastry chef ever! For him life revolves around buttercream icing, strawberry syrups, rainbow sprinkles… as also whisks and spatulas, pots and pans. His three-tier cakes are masterpieces that are already the talk of the town, and his friends simply drool over all his creations.

This is a story about a little girl Bumoni in an Assam village who sees wild elephants on a fairly regular basis because they come to eat the bananas growing in her backyard that she herself loves and needs to eat. From an adult’s point of view, this is a situation of human-animal conflict. But Bumoni thinks of an innovative, compassionate way to keep the herds away from her family’s banana crop. Then she goes a step further and comes up with a way to keep the elephants away from the village fields.

The book introduces children to the voting process in a democracy. Mini is a class VI student with a buzzing mind that runs in three directions at the same time. Now school elections are approaching and of the four candidates, Mini must vote for the one she thinks will be a good school captain. Everyone is encouraging Mini to decide on her own.