Snehal

RED

By Sagar Kolwankar

Tulika, 2018, pp.30, R200.00

The very first thing that catches one’s attention is the black torn part and a child peeking through it on an otherwise bright red cover picture. The story uses the colour palette beautifully as the book starts with a boy running alone on a muddy road with a beautiful yellow background followed by him finding a bright RED kite. He flies the kite up high in the strikingly blue sky which in the next few pages turn into dark shades of blue and the beautiful bright kite named RED is replaced by dark red war planes. The use of similar tone of colours for depicting war and peace is innovative. As the war ends and bombing stops, the boy finds the whole ground red but the boy still picks up his kite and draws a smile on it marking a new hopeful beginning that the sky would never be angry again.

Overall the story uses the colour palette methodically to show the contrasting situations. However, I feel that the space reserved for the text could have been used more efficiently, the font size of text could also have been made a point or two larger so that it would pop out more as compared to the illustrations on the adjacent pages. The story is an emotional ode to children residing in war-torn parts of the world which ends with a hope for a better future.