We live in a world that is messy and complicated. Technology has escalated it. Are children untouched by it? Hardly. Their sense of good and bad, right and wrong are no longer simple. Ask a child if good begets good, and in all probability you will hear a ‘no’! How Earth Got its Beauty by Sudha Murty for children is a story that is from another time—innocent and uncomplicated.
This story of creation differs from that told by science and religion. It is born in imagination and fixes its lens on the main characters of the story, Mother Earth and the Three Sisters. Mother Earth who transforms herself into a little girl Devi and walks into her creation with the desire to take feedback from the protagonists, human beings. ‘Are you happy?’ she asks the sisters. Complaints flow, desire for a more exotic location rather than the plain and flat farmlands of their surroundings. Snow clad peaks, evergreen trees, rivers and fruit-filled trees, birds, animals and more. The list is endless.