How does one teach a five- or six-year-old that the water taken from a tap into his mini-bucket has travelled all the way from the far away sea? Perhaps even adults using the precious tap water daily may not associate the round tripping of water resulting from the convection process.
Ondu Bucketnalli Samudra (Sea in a Bucket) attempts to explain this weather science concept in less than 160 simple words. The text is well-supported by imaginative illustrations to achieve twin objectives— cultivation of reading habit and environment literacy addressed imaginatively for young, impressionable minds. A well-designed wall-poster at the end of the book sums up the long story and could go up on the wall of children’s play school.
Such publications deserve to reach wider audiences—a big challenge.
Cutpiece Kumar is a book aimed at channelling the creative minds of children to take up suitable projects which they could be proud of. This neatly illustrated book very significantly highlights the stitching together of a patch work quilt by a boy, to welcome his soon to be born sister. What is interesting about the story is that the boy, Kumara, is guided by his mother and grandmother to collect small pieces of colourful cloth available at home, such as from an old torn saree and other similar items from a tailor shop’s waste paper basket. The boy’s imagination gets fired. The family helps him, step by step, to put together a multi-hued baby quilt as a present to his little sister. The book subtly introduces gender sensitivity by making the boy take up stitching. The English version has won an award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, 2025.