Read India Books

This is an repost of an old blog entry, with some modifications, that I had posted long back in Random Thoughts.


Read India Books is an imprint of the social organisation called Pratham. The Read India books is a non-profit book publication that publishes extremely good quality books at affordable rates for kids of various age groups. I came across Read India Books through my friend, Prashanth. He also pointed me out to an blog entry regarding Read India Books by Sujatha.



Some of the books are a photo series(based on Ganga river etc), some are illustrations based on folk tales from around the world. Their books are categorised based on reader level (pre-school, early readers and Advanced readers).



One of the books that we bought for Sooraj is called The Turtle Story. It is a story about a Olive Ridley turtles that travels great distances to lay eggs near Orissa. No one really knows why Olive Ridley travel through seas to lay their eggs in the coast of Orissa - in and around a place called Bhitarkanika. This story is told from the view point of one of the turtles from its birth, through its travel through the seas, and finally laying eggs on the coast of Orissa. The book is available in many Indian languages including English, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Gujarati and Oriya. The book is authored by Kartik Shanker and illustrated by Maya Ramaswamy.



The illustrations are varied and quality of the books are extremely good. For another example, the book called 'Pehelwaan Ji' (originally published in Hindi and later translated into English) is a story of a proud wrestler brought down to earth by a small boy. All the illustrations in this book are in black and white. Sooraj uses it as a multi-purpose book. It is used as a story book as well as a colouring book. All this for a price of Rs. 15/-(less than 50 cents). Unbelievable.



Similarly, they have a wide variety of books in most of the Indian languages at very affordable prices. The price of the books range from Rs 15/- to Rs.25 or Rs.30/-. I highly recommend them for their quality, price and interestingness.



The vision of Read India Books is creating high quality, low cost books in Indian languages for children. And they've definitely made great strides towards this wonderful goal. One could also support them in many ways - Check out their Contact Page to help them out in achieving their goals.

Kitten's First Full Moon - Books by Kevin Henkes

Picture Source: Amazon.com

Kevin Henkes is a terrific author with an array of wonderful books to his credit. We love the characters he creates, usually mice! My 4 yr old daughter, K, and I have read several of his books - Chrysanthemum, Jessica and our all-time favorite "Kitten's First Full Moon".

His picture books usually deal with problems that children face in the outside world - be it in schools, neighborhoods etc. His stories feature mice representing little children, and the illustrations are cartoonish -- basically, they talk and act like kids covered in fur, tail and ears. However, not all of his books deal with mice! There is one with a little kitten in it, and the kitten is irresistible and absolultely, positively, perfectly adorable!

"Kitten's First Full Moon" is a beautiful picture book that won the 2005 Caldecott Medal awarded by the Association for Library Service for the best Children's picture book every year.

We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Kitten's First Full Moon, which is a tender tale about a kitten who mistakes the full moon for a bowl of milk. Kitten embarks on a journey to lick the moon crossing fields, garden, but eventually returns without quite understanding why she couldn't get to lick it! Although she couldn't figure things out, she comes back home tired, wet and hungry only to find an actual bowl of milk waiting on the porch! Isn't that a cute story? I couldn't resist the tempation to pick from where Tharini left, the "kitten" theme. I still have that sweet aftertaste of a wonderful kitten story she left us with!

Coming back to "Kitten's First Full Moon", children will certainly empathize and chuckle at the kitten's antics as she tries to lick the moon that is faraway! In the process, gets stung by a bug on her tongue, falls down the stairs! The best part of the text is when the narrator repeats "Poor Kitten!" and "Still, there was the little bowl of milk, just waiting." This story is a sure winner in the hearts of little ones who can put themselves in the kitten's shoes(paws!) and imagine themselves on the adventure with little kitten. The author has made the Kitten's quest a funny and amusing story. Like all Kevin Henkes' stories, this one has a happy ending too! The narrative ends as "Lucky Kitten!"

Afer reading the book, my daughter and I continued our discussion about the kitten's imagination - we talked about what are the things we thought looked like something we knew, but in actuality turned out be something else. I had to confess to her my silly imaginations - when I was little I used to think waves in the ocean when they got really frothy as they hit the shore looked to me like milk. She came up with clouds reminding her of cotton candy, and she always wanted to lick them off just like the kitten! SO SWEET! Another very silly confession of mine to my daughter was, I told her, for some reason, when I was little I used to think planes were toothpastes flying high in the sky! She had such a good laugh over her Mom's immature imaginations!:-)

But, please do read Kitten's First Full Moon, if you can get hold of the book because this book is lot of fun and will evoke lots of LOLs. The illustrations are black and white adding to the innocence and simplicity of this book.

Kevin Henkes stories usually end with a positive and upbeat note leaving the main character to feel good about who they are or what they do. We have read some of his other books - Chrysanthemum and Jessica. Chrysanthemum is about a little mouse(girl) who gets teased in kindergarten because she is named after a flower. The story offers an important message for little ones to not tease others and treat everyone respectfully.

The other book we've read is Jessica. I didn't really care much for Jessica although my daughter does enjoy the book for its illustrations and simple text. It's about a little girl named Ruthie who has no sibling or a pet chooses to have an imaginary friend named Jessica. It was not a relevant book for my daughter because she doesn't have an imaginary friend. At least so far, she has voiced her fears openly without any hesitation rather than choose to vent her fears through an imaginary friend. If you know of a child who has an imaginary friend, they should definitely read this book. It is yet another sensitive and tender story by Kevin Henkes

St. Nicholas Magazine

Browsing through Flickr, I accidently came across a wonderful photoset of an scans from an old children's magazine called 'St.Nicholas Magazine' - These scans are maintained by a wonderful flickrite called Al. Q.


The illustrations in them are amazing and very, very detailed. In many places, it almost looks like a photograph. It is kind of surprising that there was a market for children's magazine in 1890's. I wonder how many they would have sold?


I will leave you all with some of my favourite illustrations in the photoset and request you to head over there and spend some great time with your kids. I am sure they would love them.


If you are into illustrations, love the illustrations in children's books or just love black and white sketches like me - you would enjoy this immensely.

THE HUTCHINSON BOOK OF SCHOOL STORIES

THE HUTCHINSON BOOK OF SCHOOL STORIES

(Publisher - Random House Children's Books)




This is a wonderful book for children who are ready to go to school for the first time. I would like to quote what is given at the back of the book here - "This beautiful collection is the perfect gift for a child's first days at school. From deciding what to wear to making friends, dealing with bullies or simply having fun, there is a story for every occasion". I completely agree with this. My son got this as a gift from my brother, when he was about to start school.



Lot of these stories have little animals as the main characters. That definitely gets the attention of the kids.In the story "Bad Boris goes to school" it talks about a little elephant who detests the very thoughts of a school. The illustrations bring out the elephant's imagination of the school to be a jail house where he will be chained all day long :-). But once he is taken to school, his perception begins to change as he starts having fun with his class mates and teacher ! By the end of the day you can see a smiling and jumping elephant who can't wait to share his day's fun with his kitten friend. This is one of my son's favourite stories.



The other story which I really enjoy and can empathise with is "Leaving Mrs. Ellis". It is the story of a little boy named Leo, who is nearing the end of his current academic year and getting ready for the next class. What upsets him most, about this change, is that his dear class teacher Mrs.Ellis would not be coming to his class the next year. He also feels terrified about Miss Lyons who is to come for the higher class. How his mother and teachers help him to get over his fears and feel good about the change form the rest of the story. The illustrations for this story are excellent paintings with a soft hue.



The other interesting stories in this book are -




"I hate Roland Roberts", a story about the feelings of a little girl towards a boy who sits next to her in her class. It is a hate to love story :-). "You are all animals" addresses the issue of how children always want to have a friend who is just like them and then gradually discover that it is possible to be best friends with someone who is completely different from you !



There are totally eight stories in this book, each written by a different set of authors and having a different theme.

Interesting picture book list

Came across a very interesting list of picture books and their reviews at Love Yourself by Cheryl RainField. She has an amazing list of interesting picture book reviews. It is a great place to search and find out about interesting books (old and new). I loved her selection under Magic & Fantasy.

Do dive over there...

A Kitten Called Moonlight

A Kitten called Moonlight
by Martin Waddell
Illustrated by Christian Birmingham

Ages : 3-6

Many years ago, my father told me a story....a story about himself and a little kitten. It dates back to some 30 odd years ago, when my father was still a bachelor and living with his mother and sisters. It had been a very stormy night. And all night, above the noise of the rain and thunder, he heard some strange sounds...of pitiful wailing much like the sound of a baby crying. It kept him up, and he couldn't wait to go and investigate.

So early the next morning, after the storms had abated, he walked out of the house and followed the strange cries, which seemed to be coming from the well. What he saw inside really pulled at his heart.

A tiny little kitten had accidentally fallen inside. And cats, as we know, hate the water. This little one was clutching tightly with its claws, to the insides of the well wall, just above the water line. It was holding on for dear life, meaowing pitifully all the while.

My father, in all the spiritedness of youth and compassion, jumped into the well, headlong, and grabbed the little kitten. It held onto his neck tightly, while he climbed back up slowly, and took it inside the house.

There, he lit some coals, put a little basket on top of that, and lay the little kitten inside to warm it up. Then he got a bowl of warm milk, and it lapped it up greedily. And the rest is truly history. A bond was forged and the cat had found its master. He named his cat Raja.

Everyday after he came home from school (he was a teacher), the kitten would come bounding up to him, from wheverever it was playing. And every night, after all the family members had fallen asleep, Raja would come quietly in, find my father among all the sleeping figures, crawl under his shirt, and sleep there on his chest, cuddled against the warmth.

And so on and on, my father would tell me about his times with Raja. It was exactly the sort of heroic tale that my child's mind feasted on and I was eager for more and more. One fine day, our Raja gave birth to a litter of kittens, and my father realised that he had chosen the wrong name for it all along. :) Now cats, as we know, are ferociously protective of their little ones. And in the entire house, my father was the only one allowed to come near the litter and touch them.

A lot of the details after this are blurry in his memory, but he did tell me about the day Raja and her little ones were separated from him. His family was never particularly fond of Raja, and when one of his sisters came to visit with her infant child, they all put pressure on him to get rid of Raja. My father wouldn't comply. So one day, when he was away at school, his sister took Raja and the kittens to some place a little far away and left them there. And they never found their way back home.

My father, needless to say, was heartbroken. For many days thereafter, he would cycle around on the streets looking desperately for his friend. Then one day, he lost all hope of seeing Raja again. And this became a story he relived to share with me and my siblings many years later.

This close-to-the-heart tale is what flashed through my mind when I picked up 'A kitten called moonlight' from the library, almost by mistake. I looked at the cover and thought it looked interesting. Even the author's name did not catch my attention at the time.

Now you can guess at what the story in the book is like, based on the story from life that I just narrated. So I won't give out too much of details. What I will say, is this. This book is a tender tale within a tale of little Charlotte who wants to hear from her mother, the story of how one night, she found a little kitten in the moonlight outside their home and what followed afterwards. It is written by the award winning author (Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2004) Martin Waddell. One of his other books, 'Owl Babies' has already been reviewed here by Meera.

Martin Waddell, says in his bio, that he likes to write books about a big emotion....like loneliness, fear of the dark, compassion etc in a very small person. And as parents, we know only too well, how 'big' these emotions are in the minds of our little ones. Moreover, children love hearing real stories from their own life and from the lives of someone they know. So when I laced the reading of this book with the story about my son's grandfather and his Raja, Akhil was interminably hooked. It made him want to read this story over and over again, with a mounting interest and excitement each time.

As for the illustrations (by Christian Birmingham), they are very lifelike and with soft watercolours. The colours used are mostly the colours of the night, because the main action takes place outside, in the moonlight. And after the stint outside, on the cold and damp night, it is such a comfort to come home to the warm fire and bundle up and get cosy. That's the exact feel you will get when you take in the illustrations from page to page.

So pick up this book, find your favorite chair, have your child climb on your lap and wind down with this dip in the moonlight!

The Monkey Bridge

India is a land rich in stories and story-telling traditions - from mythology to folklore and inspiring stories about kings and queens, to stories about saints and poets, and freedom fighters, and makers of modern India - the list goes on and on in both the fiction and nonfiction categories.

The Monkey Bridge is a tale from a popular collection of stories from the Buddhist literature known as Jataka Tales or Jatak Katha. Jataka in Sanskrit translates to concerning birth,or as horoscope(jatakam) in modern wedding terminology that we might be familiar with. Jataka tales concern the birth of Buddha in different animal forms in order to impart moral values such as compassion, kindness, non-violence, charity, self-sacrifice etc. The stories date back to 3rd century BC.

"The Monkey Bridge" was an accidental find at my local public library. The illustrations looked interesting and the title, intriguing. A quick browse through the front pages, I found out it was a story from the Jataka Tales, and I knew this book was going home with me so I can read to my 4 yr old.

It is an age-old story about what nobility means to two very different kings - one is a human king ruling the city of Benares and another, a Monkey King who lives with a tribe of monkeys on a treasure tree that bears the sweetest fruit in the kingdom. The human king, filled with greed,wants to attack the monkeys in order to capture all of the tree's fruit. But he is moved by the Monkey King's nobility and leadership qualities. The monkey king demonstrates to the human king that the ultimate form of leadership lies in the willingness to sacrifice oneself in order to protect the subjects that depend on their king.

In the U.S., you can find "The Monkey King" in Hindi, (narrated by Saeed Jaffery in an audio book cum picture book formats at http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/SearchResults.asp?ProdStock=19897. For folks in India, your local bookstore might carry the audio book.

Or, like Sathish suggested on the comment page, if you are interested in the Tamil version of the story or in any other Indian languages, you could always check out the website of Karadi Tales, a popular publisher of audioooks and picture books/rhymes for children in India.

Of course, if you are in the U.S, and you are curious about the book, "The Monkey Bridge" you could always check your local library in the multi-cultural section. Personally, it is interesting to me to note that "the Jataka story - The Monkey Bridge/King" itself is a great cultural bridge connecting the east to the west considering how far the story has traveled.

Like many, while growing up in India, I was also offered a staple diet of Panchatantra and Jataka Tales in the popular comic series format - Amar Chitra Katha. I was thrilled to offer a Jataka Tale to my 4 yr old in a neat picture book format. Although, I should admit, I was a little skeptical whether she would respond well to the book given the moral values are quite deep. But, she did enjoy the book, and in the end felt sorry for the Monkey King (empathy is an important value, isn't it?) And she liked it for its pictures and was a neat introduction to words like "Himalayas, Benares/Varanasi etc." The Monkey Bridge, by Rafe Martin, is a hidden multi-cultural gem!


External Resources for Jataka Tales:

1) The Baldwin Project's list

2) Story Videos: http://www.jatakkatha.com/