Madhuri Ramesh

Two books based on oral stories of the Kadars, a small adivasi tribe in South India, have been written by Madhuri Ramesh and Manish Chandi who spent much time with the Kadars in their forest. The Kadars no longer live in the dense jungle but they walk its uneven, muddy paths every day.


Reviewed by: Books For Beginners
Dhavat Singh Uikey

What an attractive and unusual cover…the ferocious tiger is behind bars! The hard cover of this book has effective cut-outs of bars and the snarling tiger is crouched behind them, on the first page. The Gond author/artist, Dhavat Singh Uikey tells us that the tiger is an important part of the Gond natural world.


Reviewed by: Anju Virmani
Subhash Vyam
WATER
2018

One of the largest tribal communities in the world, the Gonds are found mainly in the forests of central and southern India. They are known for their distinctive art forms with vibrant depictions of local flora, fauna and gods, using natural bright colours.


Reviewed by: Anju Virmani
Ruskin Bond

Stumbling through Life is a collection of twenty-five small essays through which Bond shares various aspects of his life and of human nature, in his unique style of writing, which leaves readers thinking about larger issues in the end. He calls it his mini-autobiography, but it’s encyclopedic.


Reviewed by: Esha Rudresh
Francesca Cavallo

If your kids have finished reading the first volume of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, you can now hand them the second volume to read. The battle to end patriarchy is not over, and so it makes perfect sense to have more books with profiles of more wonderful women for the young ones to learn about.


Reviewed by: Sucharita Sengupta
Aparna Jain

Like A Girl is a collection of stories of 51 women. Many of these women are not unknown to us, several of them are celebrities. The women featured in this book range from 19th century heroes like Rani Laxmibai to contemporary trailblazers such as Dipa Karmikar. Along the way you read about the extraordinary Amrita Shergill, Leila Seth and Soni Sori.


Reviewed by: Vinatha Viswanathan