How did the camel get his hump? How did the leopard get his spots? How did the elephant get his trunk? These are questions that children around the world have asked for centuries, but it took Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling’s lively, hilarious stories to give them answers. For one hundred years, these classic tales, drawn from the oral storytelling traditions of India and Africa and filled with mischievously clever animals and people, have entertained young and old alike.Intertwined within these delightful tales are little pearls of wisdom about the pitfalls of arrogance and pride and the importance of curiosity, imagination, and inventiveness.
India
Materials from India
The Story Of Little Babaji
A retelling of the well-known tale in which a little Indian boy finally outwits the succession of tigers that want to eat him.
Little Indians
Stories and fascinating facts take you on a double-decker ride across 15 states of India. They emerge distinct and different, like pieces of a jigsaw, which slide in together to create a magnificent whole India!
Letters From A Father To His Daughter
Jawaharlal NehruWhen Indira Gandhi Was A Little Girl Of Ten, She Spent The Summer In Mussoorie, While Her Father, Jawaharlal Nehru, Was Busy Working In Allahabad. Over The Summer, Nehru Wrote Her A Series Of Letters In Which He Told Her The Story Of How And When The Earth Was Made, How Human And Animal Life Began, And How Civilizations And Societies Evolved All Over The World.Written In 1928, These Letters Remain Fresh And Vibrant, And Capture Nehru’S Love For People And For Nature, Whose Story Was For Him `More Interesting Than Any Other Story Or Novel That You May Have Read’.
Work
This series of bilingual books encourages children to ‘imagine words’ and build vocabulary with the aid of pictures in a storytelling setting. By providing words in two language simultaneously, the books create a platform for children to build their own narratives. This helps them use words creatively, and remember them.
India: The Land
Describes the variety of India’s land and people, its cities and villages, agriculture, industry and transportation, the problems of development, and its animal life.
Sona and the Wedding Game
Sona’s big sister is getting married and she’s been given an important job to do. She has to steal the groom’s shoes. She’s never attended a wedding before, so she’s unfamiliar with this Indian tradition as well as many of the other magical experiences that will occur before and during the special event. But with the assistance of her annoying cousin Vishal, Sona finds a way to steal the shoes and get a very special reward.
Tiger Boy
A tiger cub has escaped from a reserve in the Sunderbans in West Bengal, India, and Neel, a poor boy from the islands, is determined to find her in order to save her from being captured and sold on the black market by Mr. Gupta and his men.
The London Jungle Book
The book is a visual travelogue that both mimics and subverts the typical colonial encounter. With radical innocence and great sophistication, Bhajju brings the signs of the Gond forest to bear on the city, turning London into an exotic jungle, a clever beastiary. The London Underground becomes a sinuous snake, Big Ben transforms into a rooster crowing the time, and an airplane — the first Bhajju ever encountered — is compared to an elephant miraculously flying through the air. It is rare to encounter a truly original vision that is capable of startling us into reexamining familiar sights. By breathing the ancient spirit of wonder back into the act of travel, The London Jungle Book does just that.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 4
Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit
On a train journey to a large city, a young woman notices a very poor girl. Who is she? Where is she going? What does her future hold? Hope Is a Girl Selling Fruit is a gentle, reflective account of a young woman’s thoughts and feelings as she comes into contact with the larger world. The rich imagery takes the story into another realm, inviting the reader to interpret it at many levels. Young Indian artist Amrita Das pushes the boundaries of her traditional art to radical new ends as she muses on women’s mobility, class, and choices.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 3