The book is a welcome addition to the rapidly growing array of books for children in India; it stays clear of the trap of tokenism. The plot and characters come together to convey an endearing tale. Pankaj’s vibrant illustrations paint an appealing picture of the entire narrative.
Guru struggles with the trauma of the accident, his anger, and his broken relationship with his mother. His mother is weighed down by guilt, family responsibilities and social expectations, while trying to hold life together. Aparna, the younger sister, feels sidelined and wrestles with her own identity, as the family’s attention shifts toward Guru.
In this story, Coyote uses his magical wishing bone to play a trick on the villagers by creating two moons. First, he conjures the two moons and hopes someone from the village will notice them. A man passing by sees the two moons— ‘two moons’ with his own two eyes—and suspects that Coyote is behind it.
The illustrations expand the text in surprising ways, offering depictions beyond the familiar. We meet a mermaid in a wheelchair, a mer-guy cooking for his companion, a plump mermaid, and even glimpses of the lagoon’s fraught history of conflict and disaster.
The story is simple, age-appropriate, and colourfully depicted with well-designed illustrations that indicate a middle-class household. The print quality and the font size are age appropriate. There is enough mystery in the story to keep young readers engaged.
There’s a lot of information provided through this book, all of it in a fun and engaging manner: we learn about the porcupine’s habitat, preferred foods, predators, defence mechanisms, and more. We also get to see a broadly positive set of interactions between humans and this wild animal,