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The One Day Elsewhere series by Puffin consists of a set of four beautifully illustrated books, translated from the French by Nakashi Chowdhry, which tell the story of individuals and events in history that changed our world. Picking up incidents from world history which have resonated across time and have significantly impacted politics, environment, science and humanity, these books place them within the context of a child’s life. They link the personal and the public, thus making these intertwined momentous events come alive and seem like they are a natural part of a child’s life. The political and the public become a more immediate and felt experience…

There’s scarcely a child in India who hasn’t heard of the courageous Jhansi ki Rani—while my generation grew up memorizing and stridently reciting Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s ‘Khoob ladi mardaani voh to Jhansi vali rani thi’, subsequent generations have met her in picture books and most recently in a Bollywood production which is, as usual, less concerned with historical fact than with creating alternative histories. What then could another telling of this tale have to offer a reader? It turns out—plenty…

Many years ago, one of our regular sojourns to the Delhi Book Fair found us buying books Written in Blood: History with the Gory Bits Left In and a few titles in the Horrible History Series. The normal childhood fascination with the macabre meant that those were one of the few books on history I willingly finished reading. Reading Natasha Sharma’s Tughlaq and the Stolen Sweets reminds me of those books. The book is a fictional story revolving around the ‘theft’ of a fruit prized by the Sultan, and the reluctant ‘volunteers’ made to identify the thief…

Celebrated children’s writer Subhadra Sen Gupta’s swansong, Let’s Go Time Travelling Again! Indians Through the Ages, is a remarkable addition to her already brilliant repertoire of publications. The second in the Time Travelling series, published posthumously, will alas also be the last of her many books aimed at making history fun and accessible to young people. She leaves behind a formidable legacy. Her non-fiction publications, especially on Indian history, continue to set a benchmark for introducing children to critical themes in an engaging way…