Filled with word plays, a bit of silliness and a lot of fun, <em>The Crocodile Who Ate Butter Chicken for Breakfast and Other Stories</em> is a collection of short stories which centres around animals, and the people around them.

The Art Gallery on Princess Street</em> is a historical biography of the world famous art Gallery of Modern art–Bombay’s Gallery Chemould. Earlier art was confined to traditional depiction of people, buildings and animals. The most famous genre of art was Mughal paintings or miniature painting.

Ten years ago, the famous children’s author Rick Riordan, of Percy Jackson fame, published <em>The Lost Hero</em>, the first book in his <em>The Heroes of Olympus</em> series. It was an instant hit. It caused a whole lot of young readers like me to fall in love with Greek and Roman mythology.

The original story titled A Camel for Kelam (Guest Editor Shabnam Minwala) and its Hindi translation, as the Hindi title makes it clear, Kelam ko Chahiye Oont, is about an animal-lover, Pabuji who lives in Rajasthan, and his niece Kelam who also loved animals. But her heart is set on a camel.

Can you taste with your toes? Or see with your ears? Or, at least, smell with your hair? No? Well, there are creatures around you that can! Take a peek into an intriguing world to discover the different ways in which animals do things that are ‘normal’. And look out for the funny bits in the pictures!.

The Girl Who Stole an Elephant</em> is an extremely imaginative and captivating read. It has healthy doses of adventure, bravery, friendship, wilderness all thrown in. What attracted me to the book first was that the protagonist was a girl about my age.

A Saree for Ammi is a short, heartwarming story set in Kota, Rajasthan. It is a story of the humble existence of a weaver’s family and narrates how his two young daughters put their mother’s happiness over their own. It teaches the reader a little about making of a saree–from dyeing the threads to weaving.

Shaljam is an instance of a predictive tale as it constructs itself on a repetitive anticipated pattern. It is a Russian folk tale, often translated as ‘The Giant Turnip’, collected by Alexander Afanasyev. Such folk tales are also called cumulative tales or chain tales since they form a string of recurring verses.

Cut Piece Kumar</em>, a bilingual e-book in English and Hindi by Indu Harikumar, is meant for pre-teenagers who generally love to try their hands at creative arts. The book is about a young boy Kumar who can turn junk into beautiful and useful things.

This is a story about the journey of a sprig from a neem tree. Separated from its tree and transported away by the wind, it recalls all that had been and fears what will become of it.

Pichki is happy to push her way out of the ground into the fresh air only to find that as she grows into a neem tree she is rejected again and again, as smelly, bitten by flies, mosquitoes, caterpillars and even birds. Hurt, she however finds redemption when her healing powers.

Only Fools Go To School</em> by Chatura Rao is based on a beautiful story that deals with the adventures of a little boy named Sambha, who is initially very reluctant to go to school. He feels that the school is for fools and hence spends most of his time outside.

All the books reviewed below from Eklavya have easy concepts and plots, with simple sentences, easy for children in primary classes to read and understand. Illustrations are good and relate with the story. They capture the ambience of the different environs that the stories are set in.

A child’s universe, where the bird and animal kingdom is as much a part of existence as the reassuring  presence of Mummy-Papa. Author Saumyak Ghoshal has beautifully evoked Piku’s mental landscape populated by sparrows and squirrels, cats and lizards, moths and mosquitos.  The shadow-play of daylight and darkness impacts Piku, like any other child, at a deeper level.

Chuchu Manthu’s Jar of Toffees, </em>which first appeared on Pratham Books’ digital platform ‘Story Weaver’, is a cute story with an intriguing title which will  at once attract children  and motivate them to pick up the book and  read it.

Stories that connect a child to mother-nature are precious indeed.<em>The Goolar Flower</em> is one such story-book. Renchu a little rag-picker girl is set off in search of a mythical ‘flower’–Goolar,  by her elder sibling Pirku and her pal Saanish.

As an editor of Indian books for children and young adults...

In the lockdown, I read the entire Keeper of the Lost Cities series, written by Shannon Messenger.  There are eight books in total in the series. I was encouraged to read it by my dear friend Shriya Kothari, and since we have similar tastes in books, I decided.

Eklavya, as we all know, is a non-profit NGO engaged in the creation and dissemination of educational resources among children who need them most. In partnership with Parag, an initiative of Tata Trusts, they have been creating books suitable for use by children in India’s.

The book under review consists of seven stories, based on rural backgrounds. The people’s struggle to save their small landholdings from the sharks from the urban areas form the basis of the stories. ‘<em>Chudail ka Nashta’, ‘Me Mor Jamin Bachawat Hun.

Mera Khachchar Danda Hai is a collection of 40 poems and pictures by children, written over a period of thirty-four years  and published in various issues of Chakmak, a children’s magazine. One page in every issue has been devoted to children’s writings and illustrations, the column titled  ‘Mera Panna’.

‘Are all girls alike? Should all girls be alike? It would be boring if they were!’Satrangi Ladkiyaan/Satrangi Ladke, an illustrated flip (picture) book for young children, written by feminist activist, poet and author Kamla Bhasin and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, through its simple narrative.

Samina Mishra’s <em>Hina in Purani Dilli</em>  takes the reader on a fantastic journey through the by-lanes of the old city of Delhi. The book weaves together, with a documentary lens, history, geography and sociology as it goes from Hina’s school housed in a medieval haveli.

Anya and her Baby Brother is a tiny book which narrates a story much heavier than it feels like. Anya is a young girl who is miffed with her mother because ever since her special younger brother came along, his needs have taken priority over her. But how do the readers know this? Because Anya is sharing.

It seemed a strange idea to begin with...

As I was leafing through the pages of this book, I was struck by how they reminded me of the fairy-tales I used to read as a child. The contents of this work are, of course, diametrically different from those of an ordinary fairy tale. Teeming with caricatures.

This middle-grade novel on zombies is actually a fun read and is suitable for 8-12 year-olds. It is the second book in a series that stars Karma Tandin, Monster Hunter and is set in a village in Bhutan. Twelve-year-old Karma is ‘not the bravest or the smartest kid’ but has decided.

Fly is short for Blow-fly–the name given by her employer Black Bill when he got her as a baby from the workhouse. Born a maggot, and grown up into a dirty fly is what he tells her. Scrawny, spunky Fly lives up to her name as she shinnies up and down the chimneys Bill makes her clean to earn a living.

Lying on the terrace under the starry night sky, my lockdown companion recounted her childhood days in a small town of the then Andhra Pradesh. She was nostalgic about sleeping under the open sky listening to mythical tales told by her grandfather.

Pirate-fan Oop (Upendra) is irritated at having to look...

Hey Diddle Diddle is classic Anushka Ravishankar, the whimsical literary nonsense approach that actually packs in a lot of sense. Think about it, it’s a story about a well-known nonsense nursery rhyme that comes true, well, almost. The cow may not have jumped over.

After taking over Instagram and Bookstagram and winning hearts everywhere, is it any wonder that cats have begun to dominate children’s books too? They say the world is split between dog people and cat people, and currently, if you look at children’s books and the pets that feature in them.

All published by Jugnu Prakashan, an imprint of Takshashila Education Society, Bhopal Children are often seen as insulated from the world’s worries and continue to live in a world of make-believe and fantasy. This world is far removed from life’s realities that can be harsh and damaging for the child. Print and electronic media developed.

I must admit that as a reader of adult Marathi books and as a translator I was really looking forward to reading children’s stories from Marathi literature. I was also wondering how the distinctive flavour of Marathi humour, turn of phrase, and cultural references would be communicated to a young Hindi reader.

The Piano is an unusual book. A graphic novel that draws you in immediately, it tells the story of a young girl Meera who is alone and wants nothing more than a friend in her life. It begins with her writing a letter to God, asking for a friend. And then.

Sanjeev Jaiswal’s Red Sun Ke Alien is a science-fiction (sci-fi) mystery drama novella. Sci-fi is one of the popular genres of  literature whose content is imaginative, but based on science. It relies heavily on scientific facts, theories, and principles as support.

This book was like revisiting my childhood and the boys’ all at once. The story is set in Deolali (Maharashtra) and echoes the memories of our childhood. The excitement of being in a new place, the thrill and apprehension of meeting new people and having to make new

Shadows in the Snow is an intriguing book filled with a certain air of mystery, even though there is no suspense on the surface as such. The atmosphere of Darjeeling created by the author captures the essence of those hills perfectly. The descriptions of waterfalls.

‘For most, school begins with crayons, satchels and tears. But for Ananya, it began with smiles and a lipstick.’ This delightful children’s novel recounting a young girl’s adventures in a private boarding school opens by describing the delight of its protagonist Ananya Patel.

Here is a complete package of real life conflict, love and hope attractively coloured by gloom of darkness to sparkle of Light. The unusual title—Darkless–invokes curiosity because there is no such word in the dictionary, still it manages to convey a whole depth of meaning as the story completes.

‘Long, long ago there was a kingdom called the Golden Valley, nestling amidst evergreen forests.’ Manoj Das’s book opens in the manner the best fairy tales do–by evoking an idyllic sylvan world where ‘everyone lives happily’.  However, he says, even in Golden Valley,..

‘History tells us what people do. Historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.’ Jean M Auel Queen of Earth is a gender bending narrative of a spunky queen, appropriate to our times. Kalinga of the seventh century is a vast land ruled by two adversaries, the Somavamsha and the Bhaumakaras. The fate of a young princess caught in their crossfire is expertly depicted by Devika Rangachari in Queen of Earth.

A doption is not an alien concept to Indians...

Sisters at New Dawn by Varsha Seshan is a coming-of-age story of two sisters, Padma and Kannagi Shankar. Most of the action of the story takes place at New Dawn, a high school that is committed to fostering values of ‘honesty, integrity, justice’ in the students enrolled there.

A cardboard box appears on the beach, a wet wriggling cardboard box. What does it contain? Woof! Adventures by the Sea narrates the life of Mumbai’s homeless dogs on the beach. A new puppy is discovered and helped by the pack of resident dogs and large-hearted humans, given a name and a sense of belonging.

Some of South Asian literature’s most lauded works belong to the fascinating category of Sci-fi/Dystopian Fiction. It already existed even before its so-called definitions came to the forefront. Resurgence and increasing acclaim of western sci-fi fiction.

Bengali Renaissance had contributed significantly to the literary works and the cultural resurgence in India between the nineteenth and twentieth century. Even before the movements like ‘Prakalpana’ and the Little Magazine Movement gained momentum in twentieth-century Bengal.

Itihaas ki Atmayein is a collection of two stories from English into Hindi, namely, Badshah, Mera Dost (My Friend, The Emperor) by Shefali Jha and Pyaari Atmayein (Beloved Spirits), by Rekharaj. The former narrates the story of a young boy Adil who is disinterested in the subject history.

What is a solitary, hastily drawn line capable of? Could this line impact millions of lives, and, ultimately, generations to come? Nayanika Mahtani’s Across The Line dwells on such a topic, and is inarguably my best fortuitous read in a long time. A tour-de-force in its own right.

Joseph Srinivas wakes up one day to find that things aren’t quite right. He hasn’t jumped through a closet door, nor got a special letter—he just happens to find himself in a strange new place. He is greeted by Mishi, a fellow transitioner who guides him through Gravepyres.

Perumal Murugan is one of the foremost of Tamil writers today. Poonachi: Lost in the Forest is apparently extracted from a novel,  Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat, which I haven’t read, was short-listed for the JCB Prize for Literature.  I have no doubt that it.

As The Book Review went into press for its children’s issue in November last year, Nabaneeta Dev Sen lay dying, and breathed her last on November 7, 2019 after a prolonged battle with cancer. It was too late to include an obituary, but a children’s writer as.

If you are the kind of person who always finds herself in hot water without a clue as to how it happened, this is the book for you. The story of Kabir, the Flyaway Boy, delves deeply into the heart of a child who cannot squeeze himself into the conventional mould. It explores the situation of an imaginative youngster who simply cannot live up.

Ruskin Bond is a gift that never stops giving. In his latest offering, a memoir titled A Song of India:  The Year I Went Away, Bond shares snippets of his life at age sixteen. Sixteen is an age of irrepressible excitement in anyone’s life. We are not quite children and not quite adult.

Enid Blyton is easily one of the most popular authors in English for children. Most known for her series such as The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, Malory Towers, The Faraway Tree, her books have enlivened the childhood of many. Though she wrote in the early- and mid-1900s.

My Daddy and the Well</em> paints a restful landscape filled with the simple pleasures of childhood—a world that any reader can recognize and delight in. With his lips stained pink with the juice of <em>kokum</em> fruit, the child protagonist takes us through his various adventures while visiting...

Which is the tallest tree in the world? Which is the biggest garden in the world? Were peaches called Persian apples? These are just a few of the questions that can be answered by this book. From herbs and spices to forests, from gardens in deserts to gardens on cliffs.

Testimonies are powerful because they bring together immediacy of experiences, urgency of issues and force of convictions into the moment of enunciation.  This tract seeks to mobilize that power to address one of the most pressing issues of our time, climate change.

Environment is a concern central to all mankind especially in recent times. Nature is the precondition for human life and survival. Given the central position it acquires in our lives, the book, Unearthed: An Environmental History of Independent India by Meghaa Gupta.

The publication of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls in 2016 caused quite a stir in the children’s book industry and popularized the vogue of collective biographies written for children, a trend initiated by the  Rad Women series. Many jumped on the bandwagon and soon.

My first thoughts while going through Uma Raghuraman’s cookbook was that I wish someone had written this when I was in school, or even while my own children were in school. My lunch box always, inevitably, held paranthas with some pickle sitting snug in the middle.

Among the various mathematicians that India has given birth to, the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan has to be in the forefront. In this attractive picture book, the author Priya Narayanan has tried to tackle the very complex thought process of a genius in terms that a child can relate to.

A few weeks back I watched the movie Wonder and thought this book is the exact gift for a kid like Augie who is not only deeply interested but also understands astronomy. This book holds up its own place in the collection of books because it’s filled with pretty amazingly wonderful facts.

I had a maths teacher who would often ask in a rhetorical fashion, when exasperated with the class, do you people want to be dunkeys in life? There would be a small section of the back benchers who would shout back ‘dunkeys sir’. The teacher knowing the offenders.

How To is a self-declared book of ‘bad ideas...How To is a self-declared book of ‘bad ideas’, and quite a good one at that!  A perfect companion to the author’s previous volume (which answers absurd questions with ‘serious’ scientific answers), How To discusses, in its own words ‘absurd scientific advice for common real-world problems’.

This non-fiction by Roopa Pai discusses 25 ideas/innovations/discoveries/inventions that have shaped the modern medicinal science; old texts, perception on the causes of diseases, the birth of anatomy, history of vaccination, emergence of new branches such as microbiology.

Who doesn’t love Peppa Pig? Peppa with her little brother George, Mama and Papa, living on a hill, happy and rotund, playing in the mud and full of life lessons for children, neatly delivered in a few pages or reels of slick story-telling? Well, I can tell you, legions of little fans around the world love Peppa to distraction.

There are many books written on various disciplines of yoga for adults, but very few books on yoga for kids. Om the Yoga Dog  is a good initiative by  Ira Trivedi to write such a book. Ira has wisely chosen dog and other animal characters to depict the yoga postures.

Eklavya is a Bhopal based non-profit NGO set up in 1982 which has worked with the Madhya Pradesh government to develop educational programmes for teaching school children science (inspired by the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program), social science and primary education.

As a physician specializing in pediatric and adolescent endocrinology, i.e., hormonal disorders of children and adolescents, I am frequently appalled at the level of ignorance so many ‘educated’ adults have about their bodies, which not surprisingly affects the way.

Inside a Dark Box by Ritu Vaishnav is an honest, easy and heart-warming read to call out the strength available to each person who might be trapped in his/her dark box. The book makes a brilliant attempt to reach out to the readers through simple yet powerful monotone.

This book can be celebrated alongside the historic win of Nobel Chemistry Prize 2020 by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A Doudna. Extracted from the Feminist Science Media Project, TheLifeofScience.com, 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists of India.

A compendium of write-ups related to the earth and the universe, compiled by Stephen Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, is most suitable for middle-school children and teenagers. The key authors and compilers are Stephen Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking.

Worries about the reading habit in children steadily being on a decline in present times have been expressed by all those who interact and deal with them. Be it parents, teachers, counsellors, school librarians and psychologists, the refrain is the same.

On the eve of International Women’s Day, Aurat March movement in Pakistan sparked women’s voice throughout Pakistan to end violence and harassment against women and change the attitude towards the traditional patriarchal norms of society. The social, cultural.

A feather in the cap of Puffin Books adding to the impressive list of books written by Subhadra Sen Gupta for children. This book is an ‘academic excursion’ for all school enrolled students and beyond. The magnum opus called the Constitution of India.

Tharoorosaurus! as the name suggests, is a mix between a thesaurus and dictionary, cleverly playing on its author Shashi Tharoor’s last name. Tharoor, a member of India’s Parliament and a prolific writer, is known for his expansive vocabulary, which makes.

Zakir Hussain can be considered one of India’s most famous tabla players. In this simple yet interesting book, the author Sandhya Rao uncovers the life of Zakir as a young boy and his journey towards becoming a music maestro. It shows his love for music from.

Travel accounts fascinate because they hold a mirror to society. The intrepid traveller intrigues–Why take the trouble? What are the returns? The well-known Hindi author Priyamvad hints in his brief introduction that the reason could be some inner urge, the ability.

Rarely has a book lifted one’s spirits so completely (especially in these bleak times) as did Dan Brown’s recently published children’s picture book Wild Symphony. After reading the book, I wanted to happily announce, like the narratorial voice in the ‘Bouncing Kangaroo’ section.

One of the few happy consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown is that people have become aware of Indian folk art. As crafts bazaars and melas, crafts emporiums etc., have had to shut shop willy-nilly, increasingly the sale of crafts has moved online.

While choosing a book to review, the title of this one quickly grabbed my attention. Having been to the Kumbh Mela in Ujjain a few years back, I was curious to know how this picture-book had portrayed the largest of the religious gatherings in India.

Let’s start with the captivating cover. Designed and illustrated by Sharanya Kunnath in a rather unusual blue and red combination, the cover displays the loveliness of Indian temple art. The author, Sudha G. Tilak, says that temple visits were a huge part of her summer vacations and those visits taught her to enjoy the stories and art forms of India, both of which she has described in her book.

These two ‘utterly, butterly delicious’ books form part of a series, with a third one, The Royal Tournament, to follow. Their purpose is to introduce the ‘Famous Five’ of the Dwapara Yuga to the young readers today with their own perspective.

This has never happened to me before. I got two books to review and both were about the perpetual state of warfare between the devas and asuras that is the popular template for so many stories of Hindu mythology. It has always reminded me of the Indo-Pak.

The Kathasaritsagara, which was compiled by the Brahmin Somadeva in Sanskrit in 11th century Kashmir, remains one of the great compendia of the world’s stories, drawing as it does from several lost and fragmentary extant texts from earlier centuries. Scholars.

This is a comprehensive and discursive book on child development, adolescence included. Comprising sixteen chapters and two essays it presents a holistic picture, bringing in perspectives from multiple disciplines like child development, psychology, sociology and education.

It is a paradox that when the first stage of the coveted national goal of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) is almost achieved (The Net Enrolment Ratio in the primary stage of elementary education was 99.6% as per the Government’s DISE data for the year 2010-11).

After 34 long years since the last National Policy on Education...

Covid has hit India badly and the pain is likely...

We at The Book Review have always prided ourselves...

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