Ekki Dokki

Ekki Dokki

By Sandhya Rao

Illustrations by Ranjan De

This folktale from Maharashtra is an old favourite at the mad house and is rather tattered over two and a half years of use. It tells a moral tale in the simple black and white way that most children’s books have.

The story is about two little girls. Ekkesvali and Dhonkesvali are sisters who get their names from the fact that they have one hair and two hairs on their heads respectively; Ekkesvali (she who has one hair) and Dhonkesvali (she who has two hairs). Dhonkesvali or Dokki bullies Ekkesvalli or Ekki and one day, fed up of being bullied, Ekki runs away into the forest. There she encounters a thirsty mehendi bush. She stops to quench its thirst with water from a stream nearby and then comes across a tethered hungry cow. She feeds it grass and sets it free. Walking deeper into the jungle she comes across a thatched hut and an old lady who tells her to apply some shikakai on her hair, oil on her body and then have a bath. Ekki does as she is told and when she is done with her bath and removes her towel, she realises she is blessed suddenly, with a full head of hair! She then has lunch with the old lady and on her way home the grateful mehendi bush applies henna on her hands and the cow gives her fresh creamy milk to drink.

When she gets home and her family sees her thick shiny hair, Dokki is sent off to get some too. What happens next? Does Dokki succeed in her mission? I’ll let you pick up the book for yourself and see. The book illustrates the relationship between actions and consequences without getting into the tricky shades of grey, right and wrong.

I was skeptical when I started reading this book because it was only to the two year old-Brat (the bean was only a few months old) who I wasn’t sure would understand. But he did get the moral implications of the story and he grew to love the book. I particularly liked the hint of humour in some places, such as – “Their mother thought there was no one quite so lovely as Dokki. Their father was very busy. He had no time to think.”

A simple book, with plenty of Indian words and names and images our children can relate to. The mehendi for one, is something they see all around at weddings and parties. The book belongs to a series called the ‘Wordbird’ series where unfamiliar words and ideas are explained with the help of word birds that streak across the pages giving readers access to a multicultural, multilingual vocabulary.

Published in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati by Tulika Books, it is definitely a book to be read aloud.

Recommended age – 3 plus.

Beast Quest - Ferno, The Fire Dragon

Beast Quest - Ferno, The Fire Dragon

Author : Adam Blade

Cover Illustrator : David Wyatt

Reading level : Read Alone Age 6- 9 years

It was my 7 year old's excitement and enthusiasm to finish this book that prompted me to immediately put up a review here.

May be I can give a little background here. Sometime last year when I was checking with Praba about books that can be introduced to my son, she mentioned the Magic Treehouse series. They are the first chapter books which he got to read. The simple easy language of the books attracted him and also there was the whole thrill of finishing chapter by chapter of the adventures undertaken by Jack and Annie of the series. After a few books the excitement wore off and there was a dry reading spell.

Then by chance Sooraj discovered this "Beast Quest" book while browsing at the bookshop with his father. It is also a chapter book. The picture of the dragon (which has always held a charm for him) on the book cover was enough to attract him towards it. It is a story of a young boy who is sent on a mission to free some beasts from an evil spell, to save the kingdom. This is the first book in this series where in he has to free the dragon from the spell, while fighting all the

challenges that come his way. For a young boy like Sooraj, this book has all the necessary fantasy ingredients to keep him glued to it. The language is lucid (with a little help

for some words and their meanings) and the print is bold, making it a fewer words on each page. It has around 110 pages. He thoroughly enjoyed the book and finished it in two days.

His enthusiasm level was so high that he asked his father to draw a picture of the dragon from the book and then patiently coloured it with his own choice of colours :-). He is now rearing to get hold of the next book in the series !

When I did a search on the author Adam Blade, I got conflicting information. Some websites say that it is a pseudonym for a team of writers. Some others give a basic profile of him saying he is from UK.

I think this series would primarily interest those children who love fantasies and have started reading by themselves.

The Runaway Peppercorn

The Runaway Peppercorn

by Suchitra Ramadurai

Illustrations by Ashok Rajagopalan


Ages: 3-100+ :)

Like the Russian folktale The Little Round Bun, and the classic children's tale The Gingerbread Man, The Runaway Peppercorn narrates the delightful escapades of a charming little black peppercorn Kuru Molagu (in Malayalam and Tamil), that manages to run away one day.

But, unlike the bun and the gingerbread cookie man who succumb to the wily fox, kuru-molagu manages to survive its adventurous getaway leaving us with a big smile and a sigh of relief.

One sunny morning, in a little village in Kerala, Amminikutty Amma wakes up with a hankering for hot Dosas along with Ulli Chammandi (onion chutney). She gets the ingredients ready for the chammandi and finds that she only has one little black peppercorn. When she gets set to make the chammandi with the available ingredients anyway, our hero, the kuru-molagu, rolls off and falls to the ground and wakes up from his sleepy trance.

When Amminikutty Amma tries to grab him back for her chammandi, he gets terrified and rolls away. Thus starts the adventures of the runaway peppercorn.

The author, Suchitra Ramadurai, is a young and well-recognized radio and movie personality in Chennai, as I came to find out during my recent visit to India. The book was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition 2003. The author set out to write this short story from her childhood, heard from her grandma who was apparently a great story-teller, but decided to present it for children in a non-patronizing way.

The illustrations by the well-known Ashok Rajagopalan, who has been delighting children and adults alike for over a decade, set the tempo and capture the wee minds by complementing the story with an animated and easy-to-follow structure.

Narration is very simple yet catchy, leaving us rooting for the little kuru-molagu as he rolls away to his freedom. The constant motion, the close-calls, the fast-paced nature of the animated peppercorn makes this a sure success with the little ones. And, the ending was on a thoughtful note: Next time you get set to make chammandi and one little peppercorn rolls away... just let it go.

Published by none other than our favorite Tulika Publishers, I was delighted to find this book during my recent visit to India, among other good finds. The first time I read it to Ana, my 4-yr-old, as I gently slapped the book shut with the usual "The End", I knew I had a winner when she squealed, "Read it again!" with such infectious anticipation and excitement that I couldn't refuse...

I fell in love with reading aloud ulli chammandi and chanda (market), chechi (sister) and chettan (brother) and such lilting malayalam words that only my dad uses on and off these days as he cracks us up with his funny anecdotes from childhood.

Hearing Ana repeat those musical words, at least as approximately as her young and as-yet-untrained tongue allows, and hearing her Dad read it aloud with as close a diction as possible, makes this such a rewarding experience in our household. The only thing I would add to this book is a pronunciation key, which would work great for international readers like the Dad in our household.

All in all a sweet little tale, nothing high-brow and fancy, no loaded morals except the suggestion to let that little peppercorn go if you see him roll away next time.