Dr. Ratnagar off the project and silenced. Thus, the mystery begins. An apt case for the Seekers to solve!
Mala Kumar’s The Missing Rocks of Hampi skillfully weaves two mysteries—one set in the time of the Vijayanagar Empire, and the other in the present that the Seekers are after.
The book has a chapter on how to find out the purity of these minerals by giving a brief history of scientific study of food that we eat. Properties of the minerals are explained. We get answers on malnutrition and overnutrition from the book. Almost 30 pages are devoted to the subject.
Activity books serve as a beneficial medium for discussing such topics. Creating an activity book focused on food and culture can be challenging due to the diversity within cultures, such as the variety of foods, beliefs, and art forms across different regions. This raises questions about what to include in the book and the criteria for those selections.
‘Quite Alarming’ or hearing a listicle of maxims that he is advised to follow in ‘Getting Help from Chanakya’, or even the final story which brings our two young sleuths together again, this time bent upon ‘Knowing the Rakshasas’—each story trundles to a halt with its moral and pedagogical imperative, and in the process becomes rather far removed from what would motivate often reluctant readers to turn the page.
Such poignant words illustrate the various shades of the night sky, and the many creatures that come alive at night.
I got the opportunity to read both the English and the Hindi book together, and found that reading the words in these two languages simultaneously opened my mind to different perceptions.
The other black and white illustrations in the book also kindle the imagination of the reader to create unusual, goose-bumpy mental pictures that metamorphose into comforting ones, as and when the stories begin to give solutions to the dire present- day condition,