The Closet Ghosts by Uma Krishnaswami. Illustrated by Shiraaz Bhabha

Here's a spooky pick for halloween! Have a "boo"tiful one!

The book, The Closet Ghosts, is a brand new addition to my preschooler's library for this year's halloween.

Here's why I ended up picking this title for my daughter:

1) During the 3-4 yrs of my daughter's preschool stages, we read a lot of animal stories, simple folk and fairy tales from India and the US. Of late, I have been trying to slowly transition her into picture books with stories depicting little children in it. I got her a few titles from India, which worked well. However, I was keen finding a picture book with a simple story with characters that she can relate to - mainly a cross-cultural picture book depicting a simple day-to-day story or an event in an Indian American family! My search led me to Uma Krishnaswami's The Closet Ghosts.

2) Secondly, the title seemed to fit perfectly with my daughter's recent obsessions with all things spooky and scary - bats, owls, ghosts, and snake. And with October being the halloween month, this was a perfect little gift for her to get into the spirit of the season.

Here are a few snippets of the story:

The Closet Ghosts tells a delightful story of a little girl named Anu who is anxious about having to adjust to a new home and a new school. She misses her old friend, Mira, and her new classmates do not seem friendly at all. All these anxieties lead her to imagine that there are ghosts in the closets of her new home waiting to scare her. Not just ghosts, but she also imagines Hanuman, the monkey god, has appeared in her room so she can talk about her fears, friends, and get help in chasing the ghosts out of her closet.

Anu, with Hanuman by her side, experiments a couple of different ideas to chase the imaginary ghosts out of the closet - one of which one fails, but boy, the other one does indeed work. The story ends with a fun little twist. The author has done a wonderful job keeping the text simple, and the text flows beautifully - not to miss the ghostly songs in Hindi, which add to the playfulness of the story. Shiraaz Bhabha's illustrations are vivid and colorful, and her attention to details is awe-inspiring - particularly Anu missing a few teeth - a pointer to her age, her ear rings, and the cover page with a picture of winking Anu - all playful and fun! It clearly shows how synchronized a team the author and the illustrator must have been working together!

The book helped me talk to my daughter about Anu's emotional issues such as sleeping alone, moving to a new house, etc. I am really thankful to the author for creating Anu because personally, I felt like I had gotten a new voice through Anu that I could use to talk to my daughter! I also extended the discussion further, and asked her, if she were Anu, what would she have done differently in order to chase the ghosts away from the closet, and it was fun to hear her answers - although similar to the ones in the story - not much you can expect from a 4 yr old - she told me she would have asked riddles, played tambourine, played hide and seek etc... It was really interesting to me that this was actually the first time I felt comfortable using a story's character to discuss further....wonder why I couldn't do it so long - may be because I thought my daughter was too young for questions like these?? Even with all the animal books that we have read so far, I have never asked her - if you were the tortoise in the story, what would you have done? Or does it underscore the need for more and more cross cultural books for mothers like me??

I is for India by Prodeepta Das

This picture book is yet another visual treat, and a fun way to introduce the English alphabets and India to little children. The content is organized alphabetically, and has a picture and text combination on each page that captures some aspect of Indian life - culture, religion, day to day activities etc.mostly from Orissa, which is where the author hails from.

It starts with A is for Alphabets that Indian children learn - it has pictures of children writing letters from the Oriya language. Followed by B is for Bullock Cart that people in villages ride, C is for cinema, D is for Diwali that people celebrate etc. My daughter loves this book, and her favorite one is "J is for Jilebi" :-)I love the S is for Sadhu! For C is for cinema - the author has a picture of a theatre with the poster "ham apke hain kaun" - I told my daughter movies are also called Cinemas, and sort of jumped quickly to D! :-) Z was a little unique,and a little tricky to explain to a four yr old -email me if you would like to know what it is!:-)

The pictures are real life photos from India focusing mainly on children. The author, Prodeepta Das, has picked a few of the pictures specific to his state, which I thought was quite interesting. It set me thinking, and thought it might be interesting to have a picture book for every state - O is for Orissa, P is for Punjab, T is for Tamilnadu ( in some cases, we could have two books - k for instance! :-)) We could do a whole series, and I am pretty sure we can find sights unique to each state that can fall in the alphabetical order. I loved the fact that the author has depicted pictures from both rural and urban settings.

There were some that I don't think my daughter understood, but hopefully when she is a little bit older she will be able to get them. And I couldn't explain Sadhu very well to her - this was my definition for Sadhu - a man wearing an orange/saffron outfit is called a Sadhu in India (lol). Overall, a very refreshing book that offers neat descriptions cum pictures that some of us have grown up with in India, and it is fun to introduce those to our children!(What a sad irony - all the talk about India in a language foriegn to the land!) Last but not the least, the alphabets have evolved into something so refreshing and definitely makes so much more sense to have our children see alphabets come to life through India's landscape. Also, I thought the author was clever to say A is for Alphabets, and not something else - like the overused "A is for apples" ( and in this case they would grow in Himachal! :-)

This is an attractive book for little ones. The two books - Going to School in India and I is for India, which were holiday gifts for my 4 yr old were part of our family's celebrations this festival season - the two "D holidays" - dussera and diwali, of course!

Welcome to Saffrontree

Hi all! Welcome to Saffron Tree. This blog is a
culmination of my passion for children's literature. I have two daughters - a four yr old and a four month old! I know there are lots of book blogs that focus on mainstream American children's books, but I haven't been able to find any that focus primarily on children's books by Indian, Indian American and South East Asian authors. The goal for this blog, to start with, is to provide book reviews and recommendations of titles with a South Asian, particularly Indian flavor.

The first book that I would like to review is a title that is really close to my heart. Having spent close to 22 years of my life in India, and having done most of my schooling there, I was thrilled to find this picture book titled, Going to School In India in the 4-8 yr old category.
Going to School In India
by Lisa Heydlauff, Nitin Upadyhe, Global Fund for Children (Organization)

Going to School In India is a delightful, non-fiction book designed with brightly colored illustrations and photographs that capture the real life stories of how children get to school in India. There are twelve inspiring stories about children attending schools in different settings - in city schools, under mango trees, mountain fields, desert tents, etc. that serve as classrooms, and depictions of how children make their journey to and fro climbing on to bamboo bridges, boats, cable cars, school buses, rickshaws to get to their schools. The book's center is a colorful foldout with pictures of lunchtime goodies.

At bedtime the last few weeks, we've been looking at this book and its pictures. I talk to my daughter about the experiences of children depicted in the book, and it's a sheer joy being able to share this book with her.The lunchtime pictures also helped me talk to her about the kind of foods children take to school with them - Dal (lentils), Roti(the indain bread - wheat tortillas) and other rice and vegtable dishes that are healthy and tasty. Hopefully, the pictures will serve as an inspiration to get my 4 yr old to enjoy a variety of Indian foods going forward!

The only negative aspect about this book is that it looks a little cluttered and busy in terms of how the information and pictures are organized, and the font colors on some pages a little difficult to read - but you get used to it after a few reads. The book is a celebration of children and the different kinds of schools they attend in India - colorful and eye-catching, and heart warming in many ways, just like all the other sounds and sights of India that one can relate to when it is about India.