Friday, July 27, 2012

Have You Seen This?


Pic courtesy tulikabooks
Have You Seen This?
Text by Arthi Anand Navaneeth
Illustrated by Roomani Kulkarni
Published by Tulika books (bilinguals)
Ages 3+

I came home with A from her school bus-stop, and a parcel was waiting for me. I had a fair idea as to its contents, as I had been expecting my review copy from Tulika. The kid pounced on it when I told her what it was, and tore open the wrapping. There she stood, with her bag and shoes still on, giggling as she read through it!

Arthi Anand Navaneeth, Saffrontree’s own Artnavy, has brought us the wacky, the whimsical, the quirky, even the outlandish in this completely giggle-worthy book. A book bang-on in the premise of fiction, even fantasy- suspending disbelief, and even believing the unbelievable!

“A chair that jumps? 
A tree that flies? 
A crow that cooks?” 

A friend who came over read it to her 2 ½ year old in front of me, and his reaction was equally giggle-worthy. The child was transfixed, with his mouth open, and saying “Yes!”, “No!” : acting out some stuff and laughing out really loud at places. It was interesting to note what he said “Yes” to. Those were the ones he has seen as the anthropomorphised characters doing similar wacky things in other stories or on the TV. So these were clearly things that children around his age seemed to think were possible- spot on for the target age group of the book.

Illustrations by Roomani Kulkarni are a huge part of the book’s appeal. The eye looks at a picture on a new page first, travelling next to the words which explains it all, just a single sentence on each page. The pair of children romping around the narrative reminded us for some reason of ET, the extra-terrestrial!

This is what my fellow ST contributor, Prabha, had to say about the book:
'Arthi's new book from Tulika – Have you seen this? just landed on my lap...and can you guess what happened? The door started walking, the chair jumped up in delight, the house in fact started spinning - it was complete wackiness let loose! Thank goodness, a flower piped in to tell everything to stop it all!  While all the time the book actually tippy-toed its way to a corner and was reading quietly pretending as if all of this was happening in another make-believe world…'

We're proud of you, Artnavy! Our personal favourite? The book that reads!

8 comments:

Choxbox said...

Can't wait to have this book in my hands!

Yay Art!

artnavy said...

Thanks Chox. Can't wait to see what you have to say. You must get the English Gujrati combo.

S- Am so glad to see my book featured here at ST.

Thanks for the review and the " book that reads" is my personal favourite too.

Roomani has brought alive the text with her art and I fell in love with the little boy and girl

Arthi/ Artnavy

wordjunkie said...

Sounds terrific! Congrats, Art.. look forward to reading your book soon.

Sheela said...

Congrats, Art! I can't wait to get a copy!

Arundhati said...

Congratulations, Art. Can't wait to read the book myself, and I'm sure P will be giggling too - sounds like just the sort of book he will love

utbtkids said...

Congratulations Art. Can't wait to tell HAVE TO SEEN THIS story to the children!

artnavy said...

Thanks a lot all of you. Thrilled by your comments.

Choxbox said...

Finally got to read the book. Delish Art!

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