Gita for Children, by Roopa Pai

The Gita for Children, by Roopa Pai

Yes, there is a need for one more book on the Gita. This one fits a particular niche quite well.

On the one hand you have over-simplified adaptations of the Bhagavad Gita that throw in a sentence or two from the text but fail to either capture the essence or its substance, leaving the young reader none the wiser at the end. On the other hand you have scholarly translations with detailed commentaries that bring a life's worth of study to bear on the subject, are a joy to read, but are ipso-facto mostly out of reach of most children, unless assisted by an adult. Then there are books that seek to bridge this gap, like Swami Chinmayananda's "Gita For Children" - but even that is more a parent's reading companion than a book meant to be read by children.

Roopa Pai's book, "The Gita For Children", therefore fills a much-needed gap. It's a book written for children, makes even the difficult sections of the Gita accessible to children, and which patiently explores some of the knottier questions that arise when reading the profound work. Actual shlokas from Gita are also present - the most obvious ones are all there - but used sparingly.

Indus Valley (Smart Green Civilizations)

Indus Valley: Key stage 2 (Smart Green Civilizations)

Kid-friendly introduction, but marred by selective omissions. Also leaves out the truly spectacular achievements of the people

One-line review: Parents are advised to read out and share this book with children, but are also forewarned that they will need to spend considerable time in correcting the several errors - of commission and omission - in the book.

Longer Review:
The Indus Valley Civilization, more accurately known as the Indus Valley Saraswati Civilization, was the largest and most advanced ancient civilization that existed. This short illustrated book does a good job of introducing the reader - children - to this civilization. It tells us that the Indus people were the first to develop the concept of urban town planning, and were the first to trade with the world. The generous availability of wells meant that people were never far away from access to clean water. Children will like the simple and full-colour illustrations in this book, and the easy style of writing. At the bottom of each page is a short line that has a lesson on environmentalism.

Waiting for the Biblioburro

Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown, Illustrations by John Parra

Inspiring short story.
When Ana, the little girl, has time to her own, she spends it with her libro - her book, her only book, a book gifted to little Ana by the only teacher in their village, who has since moved away. One day a man - a librarian - with two donkeys (burros), Alfa and Beto, carrying books, visits Ana's village. Ana has all the books she can carry. When will the bibliotecario on the burro, the Biblioburro, return? Ana can't wait.
This endearing short story is inspired by a real-life biblioburro the author met - Luis Soriano Bohorquez, in Columbia, who delivers books to children in remote villages on his two donkeys.


(Amazon US / UK / CA, Kindle US / UK / CA, Flipkart, Powell's, Indie Books)


ISBN: 9781582463537 (hardcover)
9781582463988 (gibraltar library binding)


Kindle Excerpt:

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© 2013, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Berenstain Bears' Report Card Trouble

The Berenstain Bears' Report Card Trouble

by Stan Berenstain (Author) , Jan Berenstain (Author)

Grades, soup, and stereotypes.

Brother Bear has not been studying, spending most of his time in physical education. When the report card comes, it is expectedly unpleasant, and Papa Bear unsurprisingly explodes. Will Brother Bear stay grounded for kingdom come, or will he be able turn around his grades.

The Book of Story Beginnings, Kristin Kladstrup

The Book of Story Beginnings, Kristin Kladstrup

Like the title, the book's start is worthy of a book, but peters out after that.

 (Flipkart, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon CA, Kindle US, Kindle UK, Kindle CA, Powell's)

The problem, nay - the challenge, with writing a good book is not the beginning, though unsuccessful writers find ways to make a hash of even this. It is the middle of the book that maters the most. Of course, the climax is like the icing on the cake, and sour cream does not a good icing make. It is the bulky middle that takes the tiny sparks of a good beginning and sustains it through to a hopefully satisfying end. This book, "The Book of Story Beginnings", suffers from a strong start that magically sucks you in, but which leaves you in a sort of storytelling vacuum for much of the middle. In fact, within a few pages of the  plot starting out in earnest, I had lost interest. I persevered through to the end, and while the book did pick up somewhat, the beginning belied the book.

Bangalore Comic Con, 2013

The 2013 edition of the Bangalore Comic Con (@ComicConIndia) was held at the Koramangala Indoor Stadium - the same venue as last year, on June 1 and 2 (today is the last day). Unlike last year's event, which was the inaugural edition, this second event was perhaps an order of magnitude larger in attendance - it seemed like every school and college student was there. I felt like an outlier in terms of age - till I saw Vinay's photo from the event.

Spring is Here, Big Bear, by Will Hillenbrand

Spring is Here, Big Bear, by Will Hillenbrand

We read in Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep (my review), Maureen Wright's delightful book that was gorgeously illustrated by Will Hillenbrand, that Big Bear kept getting confused when told to go to sleep. Once he finally fell asleep, he slept right through winter, as bears are supposed to. Now that spring is here, Mole wakes up, smells the air, tiptoes outside and feels mud under his feet. Yes! Spring is here. It is time for Big Bear to wake up. Bear is snoring. Mole cannot get Big Bear to wake, try as he might. Will he get Big Bear to wake up, and how? This is a short and endearing story for pre-schoolers as well as kindergartners, made that much cuter by the expressions on Big Bear and Mole's faces. The illustrations are double-spread, and while I read an Adobe Digital Editions version of the book, this book is perhaps best enjoyed in paperback form.

ISBN:  978-0823424313 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0823416028 (hardcover)

Adobe Digital Editions version of the book

    
© 2013, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Don't Walk Through the Brick Door.

(Amazon US, Amazon IN, Anniversary Edition, Flipkart, Flipkart e-book)
What happens when you run into a brick wall, figuratively speaking of course? You go get the key. And if that key eventually takes you to an alternate reality - a parallel universe, ghosts, ghouls, a twilight zone? Where you have a new set of parents wanting to give more tender, loving care your real parents will not, or cannot, but which would cost you your heart and soul, for all eternity? Can you get to keep your soul and get your real parents back? That, in short, is the premise of this creepily darkish short novel for kids.

Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep, by Maureen Wright

Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep!, by Maureen Wright, Will Hillenbrand
Sleep, Sweep, Jeep - It's All the Same!

(my review on Amazon)

This is a short tale of a big bear's attempts to follow his friend's, Old Man Winter, advice to go to sleep. Winter is approaching, and our big bear needs to sleep. However, if the big bear is hard of hearing, the results can be different, and hilarious. The book is gorgeously illustrated, and when read out to kids, will evoke squeals of laughter from them. The e-book Kindle version is of high quality - the illustrations show no signs of pixellation on a tablet, and if you pinch to zoom on the text, it pops out out, making it easier to read. The story itself is not the point of this book, if one were to choose to crib over the non-existent plot. It is a picture book at its heart, and as such the illustrations are marvelous. The rhyming sentences add a cadence to the story.

A nice book for children to cozy up to. Enjoyable when read out aloud to them, enjoyable for children to see and try and read on their own too.

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Mr Popper's Penguins

Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard Atwater
(Amazon Kindle, Amazon)

A Simple and Fantastical Tale for Children
This is a short, fun, and completely fantastical tale for children. While the book shows its age, unsurprising given that the book was written more than seventy years ago, this book is best enjoyed if read by an adult to a child.

Ignore the modern movie adaptation of the book, and you will find the story is very simple. There are none of the emotional, unresolved issues that run through every member of the family in the movie. Mr. Popper was a forgetful house painter who must have painted every house in Stillwater, sometimes many times over. When he was not working, which was the winter months, he had all the time to sit in his chair and read about the Antarctic. He even wrote to Admiral Drake, a famous explorer, and to his surprise, one day he found a rather large package arrive by express mail, with a live penguin inside. From there begins the delightful adventure and episodes of slapstick humour when Mr. Popper tries to convince a service man to drill holes in a refrigerator and put a handle inside one, or when he calls City Hall to try and find out if a license is needed to keep a penguin. In the early decades of the twentieth century, it is not that surprising that people would not have heard of penguins. The cute birds are after all found only in Antarctica.

The book is a happy tale, though you do wonder sometimes just how much the penguins would have liked being outside their native home of Antarctica. But then again, you have to remind yourself that this is a seventy five year old book. Mr. Popper is a fairly uni-dimensional man, a quiet man, a good husband and a good father, and most of all, a good penguin keeper. There are no villains in this book, at least none that are downright evil or mean.

The book, in my opinion, given how pervasive digital animation movies have become, may not appeal to older children. That is the reason I said at the beginning of my review that this book may be best enjoyed if read by an adult to young children.

If you buy the e-book version, you also get a short biography of the author, Richard Atwater, and his wife and collaborator, Florence Atwater, along with nine photographs.

Kindle Excerpt:

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

The Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch, Michael Martchenko

The Paper Bag Princess (Annikins)
Robert N. Munsch (Author), Michael Martchenko (Illustrator)
"You Go Girl!!!"
(Amazon, Kindle, Flipkart, Powell's, Goodreads)

It is the prince that gets kidnapped by a fiery, fire-spewing dragon. It is the princess that gets to go and try and rescue the prince in distress. The princess has nothing to wear except a paper bag, and hence the title of the book. What happens next is a mix of intelligence, spunk, and a don't-take-nonsense attitude from our young princess. A welcome change from the fairy tales where the princess has nothing to do but pine for the dashing brave prince to rescue the princess.
The book is beautifully illustrated, with a a couple of lines of text for each full-page color illustration. I purchased and read the Kindle e-book version, and on your computer or tablet, the book is a treat to read.

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Bangalore Comic Con Express, 2012

A chance call to my friend Pratap to get a clarification on a bookstore turned into a most enjoyable visit to the Indoor Stadium at Koramangala where the Bangalore Comic Con Express, the "the traveling version of the Indian Comic Con, the annual Comics Convention at Delhi." (http://www.comicconindia.com/Express/)

Entry is free, parking is a little haphazard, but if you get in early enough, or in the afternoon, you can find parking. Parking is also free, by the way. The indoor stadium is small enough to allow you to cover the entire floor within an hour if you are with kids, and in a couple of hours in any case. I counted more than 40 stalls there, and apart from comics, there were also several stalls of comic accessories, and also a couple of stalls of retail stores like Landmark.

One of the largest stalls was of Amar Chitra Katha, and they have come out with some new comics, like "The Blue Umbrella", based on the short story by Ruskin Bond, "Jim Corbett", "Thanjavur", "Salim Ali", and a couple of others. What was the icing on the cake was a 10 percent discount on purchases at the stall.

Amar Chitra Katha stall

Commando Comics Collections

Fan dressed as Ravana

Fans dressed as characters from the Tintin movie

The mini-event on while we were there was the launch of the second Shiva book by Vimanika, "Shiva - The Legend of the Immortal"

Yes, an unexpected and fun weekend event that both adults and children enjoyed!

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Magic Tree House #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark - My Review

Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House, No. 1) (Book & CD) (Kindle, Box Set)
Mary Pope Osborne (Author), Sal Murdocca (Illustrator)
A Magical Book, a Magical Adventure, Can't Wait to Dive Into the Rest

This is a magical adventure book. Jack and Annie are siblings. Jack is eight-and-a-half, while Annie is seven, and very precocious. Their adventure begins in a tree house they discover near their house. Finding a tree house is cause for excitement. Finding books inside the tree house is even better. Books that make their wishes come true is truly magical! Their adventure begins when the book takes them back, 65 million years in the past to be precise, to a world where dinosaurs roam the world! There they see, and even pet, a plant-eating dinosaur, a pteranadon. They come dangerously close to a meat-eating dinosaur, the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex. How Jack and Annie escape from the dinosaur, and back to their tree house, and then back to their world of today is the rest of the adventure.

The author's style of writing is simple, conversational, and invites you to dive into the book, into a magical world. There is also a subtle amount of learning that the author cleverly inserts in. I need to read more adventures from the series to better understand how much and how effective this is.

This was the first "Magic Tree House" adventure I read, and this is also the first story in the series. This is a very satisfying read, and I suspect children should be able to finish off this book in an hour or two. There are gray illustrations that are liberally sprinkled throughout the book and help the reader visualize the adventure.

Kindle Excerpt:

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Where's Hanuman, by Christopher Woods - my review

Where's Hanuman? Christopher Woods  (Illustrator) , Ben McClintic (Illustrator)
Excellent book that gives hours of entertainment and fun for children and adults alike
(Amazon, Flipkart, India Plaza, Infibeam, Amazon review)


This is a book where you have to spot a character on every page - actually a double-page spread. The character is Hanuman, and there are more than a hundred other characters on each page, similarly drawn and colored, so finding Hanuman is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are 12 such double-spread pages, and on each page, not only do you have to locate Hanuman, but if you go to the end of the book, you will find a list of 12 other characters or objects that you could try and find.
If this were simply a book where only one character per page were to be spotted, this book would lose its appeal to children, and adults, very soon. However, with more than a hundred different characters to be spotted in the book, this book holds kids' attention for a far longer span of time. Furthermore, more than one child can use this book at the same time, engaged in some sort of a competition to see who can spot the character first.

Each of the twelve pages has a theme, and on each page, as I said, there's not only Hanuman but also a dozen other characters and things to be spotted.

1. Sita’s Wedding
2. Parasuram
3. Demons in the Forest
4. Fight with Bali
5. Coronation of Sugriva
6. Marshalling the Armies
7. Marching to Lanka
8. Ravana’s Palace
9. Building the Bridge
10. Field Battle
11. Attacking Lanka
12. Pushpaka

In summary, this is a fun book that can be enjoyed by the family together, and can provide several hours of quality family time going over the beautiful illustrations, hunting for that elusive character.
http://www.whereshanuman.com/

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Laxman's Questions - Pratham Books

Laxman's Questions, by Lata Mani (Author), Zainab Tambawala (Illustrator)
(Flipkart)

A small and cute book about a young boy's questions.
Laxman has questions. For birds and trees. About animals and nature. He wonders. And he learns that questions are as important as answers. His grandmother is always encouraging, while his mother is secretly proud of her son's inquisitiveness.

Book Synopsis:
Laxman’s head was full of questions: Why did seeing a bird fly make him happy? Did the birds who saw him feel just as happy? Read this book to see if you have such questions too.
Reading Level :3
Level 3: Reading Independently For children who are ready to read on their own
As part of Pratham Book's initiative to have volunteers conduct reading sessions, I contacted Maya and offered to conduct a reading, or two. She agreed, and a few days later I had the book in my hands. A few days later I was able to conduct a reading at http://www.magicpuddles.com/, an amazing school for pre-schoolers, run by Ravi and Viji.

There were about twenty toddlers in the room - Magic Puddles follows somewhat of a Montessori model, where children different ages are mixed together to provide for a more enrichening learning experience.

Having children between two-and-a-half and four-five years of age meant reading out the story page-by-page would be a challenge.

What I instead decided to follow was to not read out the story, but rather use the rich, full-page and double-paged color spreads to tell the story.

Holding up the book, spread open, and then asking the children to guess what was happening turned out to be a winning strategy, and injecting humour in-between kept the kids' attention.

There was one child who had read the story earlier - rather, her father had read the story out to her, and she was super-super-excited to participate in the story telling session! I can imagine the excitement she would have felt - I was taken back more than thirty years back to my own childhood - as best as I can remember it now :-)

One thing that I realized was that the kids were too young to quite understand the importance of speaking to plants and animals, in a metaphorical sense. They understood the importance of asking questions. And were very willing to demonstrate it in practice too!

I shot this too soon... the little fella had not yet finished putting the book up.

And now he has. And now seeing the photos again, I sure hope the little angel in the brown t-shirt got his turn, because in the photo below, he is looking very hopefully, but still without the book in his hands.

And did I tell you the book is priced at Rs 30!! I think all of Pratham Books' books are priced at below Rs 50 - that is simply amazing!

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.