By Rati Girish This book has been a part of our conversation for a while because my son has fallen in love with the line – ‘Every seed is the promise of a forest… like you are.’ The third book in the Dreamer series – delightfully illustrated short biographies for beginner readers published by Duckbill – The Girl Who Was…
By Aparna Kher A boy notices a small sapling on a dusty path that runs through a busy village, and instinctively protects it with stones. People and goods passing by, on ever-faster wheels, shout “Out of the way, Out of the Way” as they make their way around it. They pound and flatten the path into a regular thoroughfare. Over…
By JoAnne Saldanha “… do step outside the confines of your classrooms and houses. You never know what you might find right in your back yard,” Gundappa Sir advises children, in the story Kaadu Paapa by Sujatha Padmanabhan – one of the ten delightful tales featured in the anthology People and Wildlife published by Kalpavriksh True to his words, this…
By Archana Atri The Little Rainmaker by Roopal Kewalya, published by Puffin, the children’s imprint of Penguin, is situated in a world without rain. The year is 2028, and it hasn’t rained for the past ten years. Anoushqa’s grandfather is old and frail and doesn’t have long to live. He dreams of seeing it rain again before he passes on, and Anoushqa…
By JoAnne Saldanha When woodcutters begin chopping down the trees in their forest and a drought makes it difficult to find food, Gundu and Keeri Humongoose – mongooses with a difference – decide to leave their home and look for a safer place. Travelling with all their possessions, they are enchanted by the lush green of a paddy field, the wide…
By Rati Girish Art Is Everywhere – Here, there and in Trash is part of a series of delightful picture books by Pratham based on the premise that art can be found all around us, if we only knew where and how to look. Written by the well-known children’s writers Aparna Kapur and Bijal Vachharajani with artwork by the illustrious…
By Aparna Kher Seeds are plentifully available, so why do farmers need to save them? A very valid question that Bijal Vaccharajani attempts to answer through her book The Seed Savers, published by Pratham. The answer is given right at the start of the book in a conversation between a group of farmers. It is sowing season but they do…
By Rati Girish Imagine you are on your way to school one morning and you see a leopard sitting next to you on the bus! Or if you’re at a pav-bhaji stall and right behind you is a leopard waiting for his turn to order! Fantastical as this sounds, it is exactly what happens in Lubaina’s Bandukwala’s Leopard in Mumbai…
By Aparna Kher Po is a little pangolin who likes to be alone. Other animals find his appearance strange and make fun of scaly body and cone-shaped mouth. However, he ignores them and single-mindedly searches for termites – his favourite food. He knows that his body is built to help him find them. But what happens when Po is attacked…
By JoAnne Saldanha Zara lives on a gloomy street with gloomy grey-faced buildings, filled with grey-faced people. She escapes the gloom by hiding alone in a dump yard near her house. However, her solitude is broken when her chatty craft teacher Miss Gappi begins visiting the dump yard. Crafty in more ways than one, her creative upcycling sets Zara off…