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Ghost Stories/Adventure Stories
Two for the price of one! Who can resist a bargain like that? Fortunately though, the selection of the pieces is uniformly good. there is a dearth of good short story collections in the Indian market so this flipped book is a welcome entrant to children’s literature. Look out not only for the familiar authors but the new ones too. They are good!
How do you weave together history, adventure, multiple personalities and the Kohinoor diamond without being dense and diffcult? By being Venita Coelho and spinning a 273-page yarn that leaves you with the promise of a sequel! There’s just one word that describes this book: unputdownable.
Good poems for children are hard to come by, especially modern ones. This is a delightful collection of poems on all sorts of weird and wacky themes like dinosaur eggs and pangolins that play music. The incidents are bizarre yet identifiable. The language is witty and beautiful, with unusual words and carefully crafted rhythm. These are poems to read aloud, or silently to yourself, and enjoy the play of language and a parade of quirky creatures.
Broadening the scope of the struggle for independence that children have read in their history books, this book links the events that began in 1857 and developed and swelled into the tide that swept us to freedom in 1947. Apart from events and personalities, it also discusses the ideas, ideologies and philosophies that shaped the freedom struggle and continue to influence modern India and people and movements around the world.
A beautifully illustrated and designed storybook from the master storyteller Ruskin Bond. The story does not hold too many surprises or too many ghostly encounters, but there is tremendous atmosphere. As the author describes the cottage, the surrounding jungle and the greedy crow, we visualize it all and get pulled into the world where something is waiting to happen. And something is not quite dead because life was cruel…
The book addresses the all-pervasive topic of skin colour in India. The delightful illustrations present a whole palette of skin tones by associating the shades to all kinds of things around us. Did you realise that biscuits come in all kinds of skin colour? The rhymes accompanying the illustrations challenge gender stereotypes, bring in unusual professions and children who dream big.
Monster Folktales from South Asia
This is a thrilling but thoughtful collection of monster folktales from all over South Asia. A giant ogre who eats people, a fire demon and a sea monster – all create havoc. The language is evocative and the illustrations are quite flamboyant as monsters leap out of the pages. The stories can be read aloud to younger children. As with most monster tales, these too end with victory over the monster, which can be external or internal. Is there anyone who has not fought monsters?
A delightful story, written in verse, about a family computer which has lost the letter ‘z’ (American ‘Zee’). We can imagine what would happen if we were to lose ‘a’ or ‘p’ on the keyboard. But ‘z’? Playfully narrated and illustrated, the story makes us think about the much neglected ‘z’. The wordplay and the mischief make this a fun book. There are a ‘illion’ reasons to read this picture book!
