Showing posts with label snugglewithpicturebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snugglewithpicturebooks. Show all posts

Wednesday 8 January 2014

The Unboy Boy

Author: Richa Jha
Illustrator: Gautam Benegal
Ages: 5+

I always used to admire Georgina, or George, one of Enid Blyton's Famous Five . With a boy cut and boy's gut and always up for adventure, she was breaking gender cliches long before they started to be talked strongly about. I also admire parents who try to thwart these gender barriers and simply let kids be kids, playing with anything they fancy - girly or boyish. But of course most of the boys would be mud bathing, stick-fight holding boys and girls would be pretty-in-pink girls and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all! Like the author Richa Jha says, there are no unboy boys or ungirl girls in the world. It is simply cool enough to be just the girl or boy that the child is!

Gagan is a gentle boy who loves nature, loves to explore nature, loves his teddy and stamp collection. He hates fighting games, harming even little ants, hates cape guns and battle stories. So he is promptly named "sissy", "scaredy cat", "chooha" by classmates and  made fun of. Even his Dadu tries hard to make him a Boy boy by getting him a cape gun. Only Mum understands how gentle and wonderfully kind he is and reassures him that he is perfect just the way he is and he makes her ever so proud.

All this continues until the class goes for a summer camp. Are the brave Boy boys really brave? Is gentle Gagan really a scaredy cat? All is unveiled in the last few pages of the book with a positive finishing note.

The illustrations are good and there is a part where the children peek into a dark staircase and imagine scary things, which has been done beautifully. Like all those exaggerated, vivid imaginary creatures and dark fears kids picture in their minds until the light is turned on! Reminded me of what kids talk about Prabhu's house in the "Anjali" movie. However, some parents may feel one or two illustrations look a bit scary, perhaps. Although I have to say they are not the gory type, just a little scary and very much aligned with the story line. :o)

Richa Jha writes @snuggle with picture books. I had previously written about her blog here. She has been kind enough to send us this beautiful book to read and review and the boys were so thrilled about it! Thank you so much Richa, we hope you continue to write more wonderful books in future!

Friday 14 June 2013

Snuggle with Indian Picture Books

Much as would have loved to review them, I do not have a source here to obtain Indian books from. So  until I make my trip back home, I would have to stick to local books. But my cousin sent me a blog link and I found it to be a very exhaustive collection of Indian story books for children.

The blog is owned by Richa Jha, an Indian author who resides in Nigeria. She has done such a wonderful job with her blog snugglewithpicturebooks, reviewing Indian picture books and even interviewing some authors.  The blog is very neat and versatile and reflects her passion and her talent as well. The ratings table that she uses at the end of her review is absolutely unique - "Ha Ha! quotient, Touches the Heart, Cuts through the Clutter, Visual Appeal, Encore quotient, Thank God it's not Moral Science and Hey!That's a really important book" all rated on a scale of 1-5 is such a cute idea :o).

More than anything, what instantly attracted me to her blog was the way she has described her craze for picture books, it sounded just like ME!

Perhaps if you have ever come across any good blogs on Indian books ( for children), you could just add it as a comment to this post, so it would be a good place to refer back to when you want to choose books.

Appending all the suggested links:
http://www.saffrontree.org/
http://karadionline.blogspot.in/