This is yet another of the delightful books by AdiDev Press meant for very small children, those who need to grasp their books with their tiny fingers and perhaps even test their tiny teeth upon them. If reading has a primordial stage, it is to that stage this book caters.
The concept by Chitwan Mittal has been presented most attractively through the text by Sarita Saraf and illustrations by Priyanka Pachpande. The rhymes are in English as well as Hindi, spanning two pages of full-colour pictures in rustic or ethnic style with a tinge of the comic. Wonderful they are. But a question can still be asked. A child, rather, a baby who needs small and sturdy books to get its teeth into, does it need to learn to count? And how will it be helped in this by the mythological concepts of Krishna or Sheshanaag, gopa or gopi? One apple/balloon, two apples/balloons, and so on may still convey to it the idea of numbers. But without the teaching of an adult with mythological awareness, how will it make sense of lines like:
One Sheshanaag shelters Krishna
Through the rain and storm.
Ek Sheshanaag andhi mein
Kanha par chhatra lagate hain.
Two brothers here to save
Vrindavan from harm.
Do bhai Vrindavan ko
Hani se bachate hain.
Duplication of the same entity would have been more conducive to developing the concept of Two from One, and so on. Sheshnaag and the Krishna-Balaram duo too are concepts difficult to communicate to children at the stage of needing books of small size and thick pages. But the illustrations by Priyanka Pachpande are lovely and I am sure I will buy this book for any prospective grandkids, even at ` 499.