Rahul and Luffy read

Preeti, Luffy, and I visited a friend of Preetis' a few days back. He's a Kannadiga and Dugga (published by Pratham Books) caught my eye as I was browsing through his stack of books. It was translated to Kannadiga but it's a wordless book so the only translations were the front matter and the back matter :D It's a short and beautiful book about the life of a stray dog, how its life is disrupted by an accident, and how she is nursed back to health by a kind person. I read it to Luffy and as usual, he focused on the autos and other motor vehicles in the book instead of the dog and its antics. You can read Dugga for free on Storyweaver, the Pratham Books digital platform . P.S. I coincidentally met someone from Pratham Books the day before I read this book. "A book in every child’s hand." is their mission. They are a not-for-profit publisher so support them if you can. Also, did I say that all of their content is available under a Creative Commons license and...

We picked up a couple of Telugu books from the Bookshelf Library a couple of weeks back - one of which was Mahagiri , a Telugu translation of an English book of the same name , published by Children's Book Trust. Luffy liked reading it - but I skipped a couple of pages from the book where Mahagiri (the elephant) is tortured (prodded and stabbed) by its handler because he wasn't doing as the handler was saying. I'm afraid Luffy is a little too young for me to talk to him about humans harming animals and going into the details about why the man did it, even if he apologized for it later. I mentioned this to the librarian at the Bookshelf Library and she laughed because she had done the same a few times in the past when she hosted read-out-loud sessions. But to my surprise she said that the kids had always caught her, prompting in an awkward but necessary conversation with the children. The book gave me the opportunity to remind Luffy that he saw an elephant in the past - at ...

We are big fans of Karadi Tales over here and we loved reading Cat, Come Back by Lavanya Karthik, Illustrated by Ayeshe Sadr & Ishaan Dasgupta . It's a simple book but it's our first "accordion"-style book. Ayesha and Ishaan do a amazing job of blending the panels seamlessly, which is especially important because of the "accordion"-style. Not much else to write here. P.S. This book, like a lot of other books I've written about on the blog so far, were borrowed from the Bookshelf Library in Hyderabad, India. P.P.S. I'm happy that the Bookshelf Library is helping me discover first-class childrens' books from India.

Family is visiting us in Hyderabad this week and we used the opportunity to visit Charminar and Golconda. And the entire time, Shepherd's Hill : the rise and fall of Golconda by Nikhil Gulati was running through the back of my mind. As soon as Luffy and I had finished The People of Indus by Nikhil Gulati , I looked him up and reached out to him to buy one of his earlier books - Shepherd's Hill. I live a few minutes away from Golconda but I haven't visited it since I moved to Hyderabad. I even drove past it once but didn't bother to make time to actually visit the place. After some back and forth, I was able to buy the book and immediately inhaled the 57 page non-fiction graphic novel! It is incredibly crisp and I hope Luffy reads it one day. There aren't enough non-fiction graphic novel authors in India and I hope Nikhil keeps at it. I already bought his latest book The Book of Emperors: An illustrated history of the Mughals so you all will hear about him again pr...

I just put down The People of Indus by Nikhil Gulati, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and ran to my laptop to write a short review of it. A full-time job fuels my graphic novel reading habit and this book has been on my to-read list for a while but it never blew up in my social networks so I put off reading it. Until I borrowed the book from a local library in Hyderabad and absolutely inhaled it around dinner time. There aren't a lot of graphic novels coming out of India. At least that's how it looks to me. I should have read the book sooner. I'll have to spend time looking at criticisms of the book but i'm happy after the initial read - it prompted a bunch of interesting questions about archeology, language, history, and more. I loved it enough to want to buy his first book - Shepherd's Hill - The Rise and Fall of Golconda - on the rise and fall of the Golconda fort, which is ten minutes from where I live on Hyderabad, India! But sadly, there seems to be some problem with ...