Why do some books sit on my shelves for months before I get around to reading them? I bought my copy of Gupshup Goes to Prison in August last year. In September, I met author Arefa Tehsin at the Neev Literature Festival and got my copy signed. I finally read it today! And what a […]
Who’s Afraid of a Giant Wheel?
I remember reading and enjoying Simply Nanju some five years ago. Who’s Afraid of a Giant Wheel?, also by Zainab Sulaiman, is even better. It’s the kind of story that made me wonder what draws me into a book. Is there adventure? No. Mystery? Also no. But did I enjoy the book?Very much. In fact, […]
Nisha Small: The Knot of Gold
Nisha Small (née Kutty) is the best detective in Madurai. And it’s time for her to compete with mustachioed detectives to catch the thaali thief. A missing thaali! That’s the knot of gold. But what does the word thaali mean to you? Different things depending on where you’re from. Or perhaps it means nothing at […]
Passepartout, Is That You?
I attended part of Menaka Raman’s session on Passepartout, Is That You? at Bookaroo Vadodara, and I was curious. I knew Passepartout was a tortoise, but that was all. What would the story be about? I finally read this delightful Hook Book just now, and I loved it! When repetition in picture books is well […]
My Year in Workshops: 2022
The year 2022 was all about flexibility. Conducting online sessions from cafés and hotel rooms.Finishing an online session before boarding a bus to do an in-person session in another city. Adjusting schedules.Cancelling some editions of my book club because children were – finally – travelling.Competing with swimming and cricket coaching and all the other things […]
My Favourite Late Middle-Grade and Young Adult Books from 2022
I just looked back at the post where I listed my favourite young adult books from 2021. When I wrote that, I resolved to read more YA in 2022. And that didn’t happen. In fact, I read fewer. Just one of the three books on this list is a YA book; the other two would […]
My Favourite Middle-Grade Books from 2022
I read and loved so many middle-grade books in 2022! While some of these are early middle-grade books (I’ve read four of them with my book club for ages nine and ten), others are for ages ten and above. When I review a book, I usually indicate what age-group I think it is suited to, […]
My Favourite Chapter Books from 2022
Each year, I read dozens of chapter books for my book clubs. Despite that–or perhaps because of that–there were just three that I fell in love with in 2022. That is not to say I didn’t like the books I read; I did. I enjoyed most of them thoroughly. Yet, as I looked back at […]
My Favourite Picture Books and Early Chapter Books from 2022
I love this exercise – of looking back at all the books I read and loved in the year that went by. This year, I found it even more difficult to distinguish between various age-groups. Longer picture books are like early chapter books; late middle-grade books are like early young adult books. And so, this […]
Ramanujan
What did I like most about Ramanujan?The chapter numbers! Each one is a mathematical problem that uses the chapter number and mathematical operators in such a way that the solution to the problem is, again, the chapter number. That sounds much more complicated than it is, but take a look: Do you see what I […]
The Manic Panic
I love Richa Jha’s books. I don’t know how many I’ve read, but each one has been special – Love Like That, Boo! When My Sister Died, Machher Jhol … I didn’t know Richa would be at Neev Literature Festival, or I would have carried my copy of Giggi and Daddy for her to sign […]
A Chera Adventure
I’ve been intrigued by the Girls of India series for a while, but I hadn’t read any of the books in the series until Penguin sent me A Chera Adventure to review. I enjoy historical fiction. And middle-grade historical fiction set in south India? I can’t think of a single example of a book that […]
Flipped – Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories
With Flipped – Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories, we have another first at my book club – an anthology! Full disclosure – I have a story in Flipped too, but we won’t be reading that one. I love the idea of the Flipped books. You read a few stories, then decide you want another kind of story, […]
Crenshaw
I read Crenshaw over two years ago. In fact, it was one of my top reads of 2020, and it’s a story that has stayed with me since then, a story I think about often because of its portrayal of friendship, loneliness and vulnerability. Crenshaw is the story of a boy, Jackson, and a giant cat. What […]
Gulgul in Jungalu
It’s time to introduce another series to my book club – the Gulgul series! I wonder if the book is targeted at slightly younger readers than my book clubbers, but the number of things we can do with Gulgul in Jungalu prompted me to select it. Gulgul is mischievous, resourceful and friendly, the perfect protagonist of an adventure […]
Roshan’s Road to Music
Recently, while reading A Cello on the Wall with my book club, we did a quiz on musical instruments. The piano, the cello (of course), the guitar, and the tabla were easy to identify. The violin was easy for some, confusing for others. But the sarod, sitar, veena and mridangam were difficult for nearly all […]
I Want a Pet
I’ve never met a child who has never in their life wanted a pet. Have you? But what if … the pet isn’t a cat or a dog or even a rabbit, but a buffalo? I absolutely loved Arundhati Venkatesh‘s brand-new Hook Book, I Want a Pet. Without any drama or explanation, we are sucked […]
Secret Friends
I love Elizabeth Laird. And Secret Friends was another beautiful read, a heartbreaking story about wanting to fit in, but never quite managing it. Lucy is the first to tease Rafaella, and this is something she regrets right through her life. Rafaella has enormous ears, and Lucy, unthinkingly, coins the name ‘Earwig’, a name that […]
The Train to Tanjore
It’s 1942 in Tanjore, and Thambi wants to know more about the Quit India movement. Encouraged by his father, he visits the library regularly to scour the newspapers. But there’s precious little in the papers about anything except the war raging in Europe. Thambi wants to know about Gandhiji and the other freedom fighters! Not […]
Learning to Be
Learning to Be is an interesting series of nonfiction board books, each of which tells the story of an inspiring woman who made a difference. Stories about women are important because so many have been written out of history. Presenting their stories in the form of board books is a unique concept and a striking one. We […]