Karadi Tales Reading age- 4 and above
Authors- Praba Ram and Sheela Preuitt
Illustrator- Shilpa Ranade
Big pleasures in our lives are derived from small uneventful days.
Many of our memories tend to be food-centric. In fact, every child will have one or more special foods to relate to. And more often than not, that special food would have been made in his/her home. They look forward to it, savor it, brag about it and like to share it with their friends.
Prabha and Sheela take us on a journey to savour Tsering's thukpa as he announces to his friends and invites them home for a share of his grandma's special thukpa.
Prabha and Sheela (and the wonderful illustrator Shilpa Ranade) have recreated the locales with such degree of detail, that it transports you to Ladakh.
It is a beautiful story of give and take in a community. At the end of the story I was left with a longing for a Thukpa bowl and what is fantastic is that the book holds a recipe too to satiate that longing.
That Tsering is blind is woven subtly into the story. Everyone around him accepts it and you do too, because that becomes beside the point. You see him walking alone, meeting and greeting people enroute and helping around the house as any child would.
Where was Tsering coming from? What else happens in Tsering's life?
Wishing there will be more books ...
This is a review by Sreelatha - parent of 6 year old Kalyani.
You can look up the publishers' link here.