These books may actually be hard to find under the conventional piles of fantasy and adventure. But that’s because they are completely and delightfully different from the run of the mill children’s book.
Ranga Roopa: Gods · Words · Images, BN Goswamy
Ghan jaise Ghanashyama hain kale / nayana vishal khile mukh wale / lila nit karte Shrinath / nit inke shringar nirale.
Dark as the cloud is he, / Krishna, lotus-eyed, smile-bedecked, / Playful child-god in his Shrinatha form / lover of all that is beautiful.
G for Ghanashyam, in English translation doesn’t quite cut it for flavour right? The book does, though. A slightly bigger than postcard-sized gem, where the Devanagari alphabet pings, a verse sings and an art form rings – on each page of this book.
“Here, poetry is used to bring the reader, especially the young reader, close to art, and to enable him or her to recognise some important images. In India, we have some wonderful paintings and sculptures that contain both meaning and delight,” says B.N.Goswamy, the art historian author of this book, in the opening notes.
The Devanagari letters appear, one page at a time, in a, aa, e, ee order. But as one flips the page, it is not the Hindi teacher from school that one recalls, but something flowing and mixing between the sound of the letters, the music of the Hindi verse (written specially for this book) and the rasa of the visual depiction.
G for Ghanashyama, for instance comes with a 19th century painting of the dark Krishna, unique to Nathdwara, Rajasthan. The verse asks to be read out and offers the infectious sing-song feel that makes chants so taut and musical.
Think of it as a fun mini art appreciation course or a small treat for more distracted times, when a little book can be read from any page and enjoyed. Folk with a little feel for Hindi are bound to relish more, but the book is in Hindi and English.
Why The Sky Is Blue, Chandralekha & Dashrath Patel
A famous scientist is in mid-speech, vigorously moving his hands about as he looks up in wonder and says, “One thing leads to another. That is the essence of science. You must go where it leads you. The moment you raise a question, another arises. Then another arises. Ultimately, you find you have to travel the whole field of science before you get the answer for why the sky is blue.”
The scientist is C.V. Raman. There is another famous twosome listening to him. One of them, the dancer Chandralekha. And the other, the founder member of the National Institute of Design, Dashrath Patel.
The dancer delights at the animation before her – the moving hands, like sparks of movements telling a story. She instructs her friend Dashrath to take black and white photos of Dr Raman, giving him real time cues on the exact moments she wants photographed.
The book unfolds as one photo-one quote-one page from this Raman lecture. While it is a light introduction to why the sky is blue, what it manages to do is return one to the essence of wonder and questioning. at the heart of science.
A scientist’s curiosity conveyed to the young through a dancer’s curiosity for the scientist’s expression. And a helpful, talented friend who helps execute the idea. Making this book a real collector’s item both for lovers of science and meaningful collaborations. All three are long dead, but the book lives on.
Deki: The Adventures of a Dog and a Boy in Tibet, George Schaller
A story which swings between two primal calls, security and the wilderness, this is quite the opposite of a viral pet cat video. A tale told from the point of view of a Tibetan mastiff Deki, and Tashi and Karma, her human companions, in Tibet.
What is refreshing is that it completely sidesteps the Disney-like cutefication of grafting human ways on animal behavior. The reader travels with Deki – tramping over mountains, gushing rivers, and caves where meditative masters offer philosophical cues to Karma – as the two of them separate.
Although Schaller, a field biologist, wrote the dog parts, they might not feel off-course to dog lovers. For this book is like a boomerang of a conversation between a dog’s long history with humans as well as its own wild, wolf-like ways. Both stories ricochet through this adventure.
The dog, much like the human in the story, encounters family life, in what is a lovely fact-meets-fiction episode. Given the different senses that humans and dogs operate with, the tale also looks on with a curious genteelness at the limitations of both kinds of perception out in the wilds.
The dog can smell better and the human wonders why the dog can’t see as far. The beauty is that in a partnership they learn to work with each other’s advantages. And listen to each other a little better. It brings you a tale in which nobody loses, yet lessons are learnt.
It is not 140 characters here, but more than 140 pages over which the reader experiences the full range of skills and power of a dog-and-human endurance. The wild sits on the brink of being domesticated, but Deki has a strong mind. Despite its earnest thoughtfulness, it is not an overtly preachy book and remains full of adventure. This is a story which writer and publisher Anuradha Roy coaxed out of George Schaller, quite suitably at a mountain literature festival in Mussoorie.
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Ranga Roopa: Gods · Words · Images, BN Goswamy
Ghan jaise Ghanashyama hain kale / nayana vishal khile mukh wale / lila nit karte Shrinath / nit inke shringar nirale.
Dark as the cloud is he, / Krishna, lotus-eyed, smile-bedecked, / Playful child-god in his Shrinatha form / lover of all that is beautiful.
G for Ghanashyam, in English translation doesn’t quite cut it for flavour right? The book does, though. A slightly bigger than postcard-sized gem, where the Devanagari alphabet pings, a verse sings and an art form rings – on each page of this book.
“Here, poetry is used to bring the reader, especially the young reader, close to art, and to enable him or her to recognise some important images. In India, we have some wonderful paintings and sculptures that contain both meaning and delight,” says B.N.Goswamy, the art historian author of this book, in the opening notes.
The Devanagari letters appear, one page at a time, in a, aa, e, ee order. But as one flips the page, it is not the Hindi teacher from school that one recalls, but something flowing and mixing between the sound of the letters, the music of the Hindi verse (written specially for this book) and the rasa of the visual depiction.
G for Ghanashyama, for instance comes with a 19th century painting of the dark Krishna, unique to Nathdwara, Rajasthan. The verse asks to be read out and offers the infectious sing-song feel that makes chants so taut and musical.
Think of it as a fun mini art appreciation course or a small treat for more distracted times, when a little book can be read from any page and enjoyed. Folk with a little feel for Hindi are bound to relish more, but the book is in Hindi and English.
Why The Sky Is Blue, Chandralekha & Dashrath Patel
A famous scientist is in mid-speech, vigorously moving his hands about as he looks up in wonder and says, “One thing leads to another. That is the essence of science. You must go where it leads you. The moment you raise a question, another arises. Then another arises. Ultimately, you find you have to travel the whole field of science before you get the answer for why the sky is blue.”
The scientist is C.V. Raman. There is another famous twosome listening to him. One of them, the dancer Chandralekha. And the other, the founder member of the National Institute of Design, Dashrath Patel.
The dancer delights at the animation before her – the moving hands, like sparks of movements telling a story. She instructs her friend Dashrath to take black and white photos of Dr Raman, giving him real time cues on the exact moments she wants photographed.
The book unfolds as one photo-one quote-one page from this Raman lecture. While it is a light introduction to why the sky is blue, what it manages to do is return one to the essence of wonder and questioning. at the heart of science.
A scientist’s curiosity conveyed to the young through a dancer’s curiosity for the scientist’s expression. And a helpful, talented friend who helps execute the idea. Making this book a real collector’s item both for lovers of science and meaningful collaborations. All three are long dead, but the book lives on.
Deki: The Adventures of a Dog and a Boy in Tibet, George Schaller
A story which swings between two primal calls, security and the wilderness, this is quite the opposite of a viral pet cat video. A tale told from the point of view of a Tibetan mastiff Deki, and Tashi and Karma, her human companions, in Tibet.
What is refreshing is that it completely sidesteps the Disney-like cutefication of grafting human ways on animal behavior. The reader travels with Deki – tramping over mountains, gushing rivers, and caves where meditative masters offer philosophical cues to Karma – as the two of them separate.
Although Schaller, a field biologist, wrote the dog parts, they might not feel off-course to dog lovers. For this book is like a boomerang of a conversation between a dog’s long history with humans as well as its own wild, wolf-like ways. Both stories ricochet through this adventure.
The dog, much like the human in the story, encounters family life, in what is a lovely fact-meets-fiction episode. Given the different senses that humans and dogs operate with, the tale also looks on with a curious genteelness at the limitations of both kinds of perception out in the wilds.
The dog can smell better and the human wonders why the dog can’t see as far. The beauty is that in a partnership they learn to work with each other’s advantages. And listen to each other a little better. It brings you a tale in which nobody loses, yet lessons are learnt.
It is not 140 characters here, but more than 140 pages over which the reader experiences the full range of skills and power of a dog-and-human endurance. The wild sits on the brink of being domesticated, but Deki has a strong mind. Despite its earnest thoughtfulness, it is not an overtly preachy book and remains full of adventure. This is a story which writer and publisher Anuradha Roy coaxed out of George Schaller, quite suitably at a mountain literature festival in Mussoorie.