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© Copyright 2013 - 2025
Varsha Seshan

Blame It on the Untz

September 6, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Blame It on the Untz by Lavanya Karthik is such a fun book! From the crocodile of group work to music making and competition, there’s so much we can do with this book at my book club! Once more, it’s part of a series–POFFS. I don’t yet know whether I will read the others in the […]

Filed Under: Books, Children, Workshops Tagged With: Blame It on the Untz, book club, bookish activities, books for ages nine and ten, Lavanya Karthik, online reading programme, online workshops for children, reading

Blame It on the Untz

August 21, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I learned one new word when I read Left-Out Paru, and I learned another when I read Blame It on the Untz! Untz. What a delightful word! And just like so many books I’ve read by Lavanya Karthik, Blame It on the Untz is such a fun book! Adi is excellent at the keyboard. And […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: Blame It on the Untz, books for ages nine and ten, Lavanya Karthik, POFFS, reading, review

A Demon in Dandi

March 31, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

We all know about the infamous salt tax and the march to Dandi. What would the people of Dandi have felt at the time? Were people even aware of this huge political upheaval brewing in various parts of the country? A Demon in Dandi by Lavanya Karthik is part of Duckbill’s Songs of Freedom series, […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: A Demon in Dandi, books for tweens, historical fiction, Lavanya Karthik, Middle Grade, reading, review, Songs of Freedom

The Girl Who Played with Numbers – Shakuntala Devi

March 10, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

The Girl Who Played with Numbers by Lavanya Karthik is a lovely addition to her series of biographies for very young readers. A little note tells us that the illustrations in this book about Shakuntala Devi are inspired by the Mysore school of painting. While this isn’t my favourite style, I love the fact that […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: Biography, books for ages five and six, Dreamers, Lavanya Karthik, Picture Book, reading, review, Shakuntala Devi, The Girl Who Played with Numbers

Four Hook Books

March 21, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

At a workshop recently, I showed participants a few hOle books and Hook Books. I had Malhar in the Middle (one of my favourites), The Clockwala’s Clues (because how could I not?), Cyrus the Whyrus (a delightful new Hook Book) and Passepartout, Is That You? (because I love how readers are active participants in the hunt for Passepartout). And not one of […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: Aaryama Somayaji, Adithi Rao, Asha Nehemiah, books for ages five and six, Boy Bear, Chetan Sharma, Cyrus the Whyrus, Hook Books, Lavanya Karthik, Priya Kuriyan, reading, review, Wet Paint

The Boy Who Loved Birds

September 19, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

There’s something special about Lavanya Karthik’s Dreamers series. With so little, each book does so much! The Boy Who Loved Birds is about Salim Ali as a boy. What questions did he have? What led him to become a world-famous ornithologist? Like all the other books in the series, the illustrations in The Boy Who […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: Chapter Book, Dreamers, Lavanya Karthik, reading, review, The Boy Who Loved Birds

Dreamers – Lavanya Karthik

June 22, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I finally read the next two books in Lavanya Karthik’s series, Dreamers. I read the first two nearly a year ago! Once more, the visuals are gorgeous. And the stories? Simple and delightful. Janaki wants to be like the birds her father loves so much. They lurk in his eyes and make his eyes shine. But her […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: Chapter Book, Dreamers, Lavanya Karthik, reading, review, The Boys Who Created Malgudi, The Girl Who Was a Forest

Dreamers

August 2, 2021 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Dreamers. What a beautiful title for a series of illustrated stories about children who dared to dream and then dared to live their dream. The first two books in the series are about light and song, and I found that quite lovely too. Richly illustrated with stark, contrasting colours, The Boy Who Played with Light and The […]

Filed Under: Books, Children Tagged With: books for ages seven and eight, Dreamers, Lavanya Karthik, non-fiction, reading, review, The Boy Who Played with Light, The Girl Who Loved to Sing

Books I Read in January 2020

January 31, 2020 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I wrote already about the three hOle books I read, as well as about The Lilliputians. But there’s so much more, as always, especially as I was travelling! Instead of doing one post per book, here’s a list of books I read and loved. Neel on Wheels Neel on Wheels is a lovely picture book written by Lavanya […]

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: Boo! When My Sister Died, Eva Ibbotson, Gautam Benegal, Habib Ali, Jane de Suza, Lavanya Karthik, Neel on Wheels, Ninja Nani and the Bumbling Burglars, reading, review, Richa Jha, Star Struck, Subhadra Sengupta, Sumanta Dey, Super Zero and the Grumpy Ghosts, The Star of Kazan