By R. Amarendran

This is the story of a knife sharpener who takes a daily round of a few vil-lages near his home, sharpening garden shears, coconut scrapers, meat cleavers and anything else which may need his services. Lack of work makes him decide one day to cross the forest, especially since Eid is around the corner and he wants to be able to afford new clothes and sweets for his family for the occasion. The twist to the story is how he ends up helping animals keep their teeth and claws sharp, and how they then repay Salim with meat and fruit enough for his and his family’s needs.


Reviewed by: T.C.A. Avni
By Shabnam Minwalla

Not-so-lucky Sumi’s friends think she is so-oo lucky to have a lovely sea-facing room stuffed with beautiful toys, books and games, but Sumi only smiles politely. She doesn’t think so at all because she cares more about yummy food and is always hungry. This is quite a shame considering that her mother is a health food freak and writes cookbooks and hosts TV cookery shows all the time. When she works on a book on South American food, their home is filled with quinoa and llama stews for a month. Or rice dishes for every meal if the book or show is on rice dishes—much to the entire family’s dismay of course.


Reviewed by: Nita Berry
By Shabnam Minwalla

Nina is an unlikely supergirl, undersized, serious and shy. But she is gifted with an amazing secret superpower—‘She could look into people’s hearts and see if they were nice or nasty.’ Kind and cheerful people give out yellow and silver rays, while angry or evil people are surrounded with red or purple clouds.


Reviewed by: Nita Berry
By Meera Nair

When Maya is made a class cup-board monitor, she has to fiercely guard the shiny little key to the class cupboard. For it contains ‘stacks of craft paper in pink and green… baskets of broken crayons… coloured pencils and blue notebooks… and a giant bottle of gum. It was the tallest, biggest, bluest bottle of gum Maya had ever seen.


Reviewed by: Nita Berry
By Bharati Jagannathan

This book is about a soldier who comes from Yarkhand across the Himalaya mountains, near Cheena Desha. He goes to a house in another village near Mathura. He meets some people called Ambika, Somadevi, Govinda and Nagadeva. He starts making strange sounds. Ambika recognizes some words of Prakrit. Ambika’s father Nagadeva, a blacksmith, understands what he is saying. He was saying that his horse had tumbled and lost a shoe.


Reviewed by: Aditya Karnik
By Bharati Jagannathan

The main character in this story is a monk called Xuan Zang. He is from Cheena Desha. The other characters are Valli, her brother Mahindra and their parents. They live in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. One day Valli was helping her mother with the housework when her brother Mahendra came. He said Appa asked him to take their coconuts to the market place. He said someone he knows will sell them for him. ‘Do you want to come?’ asked her brother. She agreed.


Reviewed by: Aditya Karnik