Tag: picture-books

Books – The Truest Brilliance of Humankind Captured

One of the most pleasurable tasks in December for me is to go back and wander over my reading lists for the past year. It is always a source of pleasure, and sets the intent and purpose for the year ahead at the same time.

Book Club:

This year, I joined a book club and that provided for many hours of companionship with an eye to discussing the books afterwards with your friends.

We managed to do a variety of genres in our book club too.

A broad array of topics can be discussed with this set of books, and the cups of tea, and the sparkling conversations were truly delightful. Feminism, colonialism, sexism, sense of purpose, and so much more.

Booklegger Books:

I volunteer from time to time in elementary school classrooms and the Bootlegger Volunteer program is one such where I get the opportunity to talk about and discuss books in classrooms.

  • Van Gogh Deception – By Deron Hicks 
  • Life in the Ocean – Oceanographer Sylvia Earle – By Claire Nivola (author of Wangari Maathai – Planter of 30 million trees in Kenya)
  • The man who dreamed of infinity – the life of genius Srinivasan ramanujan by Amy alznauer illustrated by Daniel miyares
  • The Firework Maker’s Daughter – by Philip Pullman
  • Firefly Hollow – by Allison McGhee
  • Tesla’s Attic – By Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman

Guilty Pleasures:

It is the reason I pick up books and authors whose work feels like home every so often. There is familiarity in their worlds – a safe haven for those looking to be refreshed without too much effort. The worlds where humanity has all of the problems we do – only with an eye for humor, magic, and simplicity that we crave to build for ourselves in our real lives. Malgudi, Fairacre, Thrush Green, Hogwarts, Corfu, Blandings Castle, the idyllic worlds of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, and many more. 

  • Miss Read
  • P G Wodehouse
  • J K Rowling and many fan-fiction authors who are frankly brilliant and so deserving. Many times, I’ve hoped I could know if they went on to write other books, for I knew I would read them.
  • R K Narayan
  • Gerald Durrell

Children’s Books:

I don’t know why people go in for self-help tomes when there are brilliant children’s books for all of us to enjoy and devour. Who was it who said, It takes a true genius to explain things simply? I agree with them.

Some of these authors and illustrators are truly unsung geniuses – I wish there was a way for all places of adult work such as financial hubs, hospitals, Houses of Parliament, civic offices, transportation hubs, technology companies, insurance companies, retailing outlets etc to have a good library with children’s books to dip and delve into for a quick refresher of spirits.

I used to work at a company with an exemplary work culture. (sadly the company is no longer there) The walls were adorned with beautiful artwork, we received books as gifts every now and then, authors came to visit, and we had library nooks – surrounded by excellent books in design, literature and philosophy. I have done some of my most rigorous work in these hallowed halls of the library.

If you had access to places like this, it is truly life-changing. Some noteworthy books:

  • The Shape of Ideas – By Grant Snyder
  • On Tyranny – By Timothy Snyder (in progress)
  • The Oboe Goes Boom – Boom – the band book on the kind of instruments and the brilliant way in which the names in each of the pages actually refers to a famous player of the instrument.
  • You Can Learn to be an Artist – this book was brilliant, but it made me want to cry. It made me want to rage against the world for creating AI and taking away that simple joy of art from humans – for those who say you can do the same with the screen and a prompt now, my response is, “Why can there not be any pursuits left to mankind that is not dependent on a screen?”
  • A Songbird Dreams of Singing – Poems about sleeping animals – by Kate Hosford – Illustrated by Jennifer M Potter
  • Astonishing Animals – Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit – Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten
  • Worldwide Monster Guide – By Linda Ashman, Illustration by David Small
  • Sometimes, I feel like an Oak – By Danielle Daniel & Jackie Traverse
  • My name is as long as a river – Suma Subramaniam
  • The fox and the star – Coralie Bickford Smith (brilliant artwork – sweet story – truly captures the loneliness of being – read again)

Understanding Ourselves

What makes us human? How do we know whether we are keeping healthy in our minds and bodies? These are topics that cannot be easily answered – and yet so many philosophers and writers attempt to do just that – understand our complexities.

Alternate Universes

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk  away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth” – Neil Gaiman in The Ocean at the End of the Lane

  • The Lefthand side of Darkness – By Ursula K Le Guin
  • Goddess of the River – Vaishnavi Patel
  • Our Missing Hearts – By Celeste Ng
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane – By Neil Gaiman
  • Generosity – By Richard Powers
  • YellowFace – By R F Kuang ( about the publishing industry)

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

I would probably add books and nature to the list by Tolkien.

Navigating Life With the Power of Stories

Ooh! That’s a good one!

Read it!

Hmm..must check that one out.

Whadiddesey?

Predictable! 

I was enjoying the narrative voice in my brain as I jotted down the titles almost as much as the commentary given by the folks themselves. It had been so long since we sat in a room where everyone introduced themselves with their names and their childhood favorite book. 

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As I went over the list I was writing, I wondered what those authors would feel when they heard about the kind of influence they had on children, now adults, decades later. Many of the authors we mentioned in our room were no more. Yet. Their words lived on, the worlds they created lived on, and the memories associated with these words and worlds lived on. One person said of their book that it saved them. The escape into the book saved them as a child. 

Isn’t that marvelous?

Our Fascination with Stories

I understood again our fascination with words, stories, images – in a confusing world, they provide guidance. In a fast evolving world with its revolving door of trends and gadgets, books provide continuum. 

To make sense of the world around us using stories is in itself an evolutionary gift. One that whales possess and possibly elephants too. Many creatures pass down knowledge needed to survive – are they in the form of stories? We do not know. We might soon enough. I read this article in which AI was able to decode sperm whale language. 

NPR: AI to decode Sperm Whale Language

Quote from Cosmos by Carl Sagan:

Some whale sounds are called songs, but we are still ignorant of their true nature and meaning. They range over a broad band of frequencies, down to well below the lowest sound the human ear can detect. A typical whale song lasts for perhaps 15 minutes; the longest about an hour. Often it is repeated, identically beat for beat, measure for measure, note for note. 

Very often, the members of the group will sing the same song together. By some mutual consensus, some collaborative song-writing, the piece changes month by month, slowly and predictably. These vocalizations are complex. If the songs of the humpback whale are enunciated as a tonal language, the total information content, the number of bits of information in such songs, is some 10 to the power of 6 bits, about the same as the information content of the Iliad or the Odyssey.

I would love to hear and understand the generational wisdom that these large benevolent creatures have for living in the oceans. The ever changing oceans must be a rich source of material. 

Through our words, and the stories of our lives, we help make sense of the world around us. We figure out what our heart desires, what our morals are, the choices we must make, the work we must do, the characters we want to become. 

Becoming is a Messy Business

So what are the stories we tell ourselves, and those close to us? How do those reminiscences help? I remember laughing at a statement I heard once – “avan oru padiccha muttaal  -அவன் ஒரு படிச்ச முட்டாள் ” which loosely translates to: “He is an educated fool.”, and it stuck with me. How often the growth that has to happen at critical moments in our life does not happen, and we are left dealing with the repercussions of this missed growth? The right book, the right story at the right time.

Becoming is a messy business, and yet as long as we have a sense of working towards who we are becoming, we can continue growing. 

In all these millennia, there does not seem to be a better teacher than stories. Small everyday stories of normal people navigating life in this balancing act of the universe.

Your Favorite Stories

“What about you? What was your favorite book as a child?”

I was somewhat surprised my turn had come this quickly, but I rallied, “The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. We had this 90 foot eucalyptus tree near our home. It was so tall, more than half of it was obscured in the clouds, and it was very easy to imagine that high up in the clouds were revolving worlds – a new one every few days.” I said to a titter of polite murmurs. 

The remaining folks went on with their favorite books. In describing the old tree near our childhood home and all those rainy days spent reading my favorite books, I found myself smiling a small smile. 

This would be a nice thing to share with the children and ask after their favorite books. 

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What was your favorite book as a child?

Captivating Creatures & Whimsical Tales

“We really need a read-a-thon!” 

A quiet chuckle and then, “Yeah – look at this.”

So, we sat. Quietly. Reading together. 

Children’s books really are the best -the equivalent of YouTube shorts to get into the act of reading: 

To turn a fun read into a whimsical time, 

To turn a chuckle into a snort, 

A laugh into a guffaw,

A sigh into a wistful longing.

🦌🦅🐿️🐦‍⬛🦢The day’s books were awe-worthy all right. I am just outlining a few here, but it serves to reiterate our need to dedicate a few hours every week to children’s books – the art, information, story-telling is all it takes to remind us that the world holds space for beautiful , gentle, innocent things. We just have to stop and enjoy them, and if possible contribute to make it all the more wondrous in our turn. 🦌🦅🐿️🐦‍⬛🦢

🦌This is how we do it – by Matt Lamothe

This booklegger award winning book takes the look of seven kids from around the world and shows us that we aren’t all that very different whether we live in a tiny hut in Uganda with a small family, or a large family in the hills of Peru, or in a multi story building in Italy, The author’s idea of profiling 7 children from Japan, Peru, Iran, Russia, India Italy and Uganda is brilliantly done. The similarities and differences are beautifully illustrated. 

🦅If You Run Out of Words – Felicita Sala

This book is whimsy itself. It reminds us of the beautiful reason we love children. For they say and ask the darndest things. In this book, the child asks her father what would happen if he ran out of words. Flabbergasted is what should have happened, but he rallies. Assuring his little girl that he would to to magical elves and get the words he needs. If that doesn’t work, well, he would go underwater, into other universes and find what he needs – even if he runs out of all the words there are, he wouldn’t ever run out of the 3 most precious words to say before putting his daughter to bed, would he now? 

🐿️From Tree to Sea – By Shelley Moore Thomas & Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal 

This book is for those in quiet moods. What would the whale teach you? To dream big and take small steps? What would the mountain teach you, the sea? The artwork is comforting, serene and perfect for quiescent summer afternoons.

🦢Creature Features – By Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

A curious book that tells us odd things about animals around us – why does the babirusa have dangerous tusks? (Babirusa is not an animal we think of on a regular basis is it? Nor is the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar or the thorny devil if you come to think of it. Just for that, it is well worth picking up books like these in my opinion) 

🐘Astonishing Animals By Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten

An astounding book of creatures with different superpowers – the motion specialists, shape shifters, vertical ocean dwellers and so much more. I will probably have another post or so for this book because of the captivating illustrations, the interesting details about the fascinating creatures brought alive in the pages of the book.

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What do you think? Which children’s books would you recommend?

Suma’s A Bindi Can Be

Suma Subramanian

I have been waiting for Asian Heritage Month to review the brilliant books of Suma Subramaniam. I yearn for books that hold a nod for us. I know what it is like to be the only child wearing a bindi in a classroom full of non-bindi wearing children – and so does my daughter I am afraid. 

Despite this, whenever I could, I looked for bindi patterns. Beautiful patterns – so elegantly thought out and shaped. Tiny little spots of art that you could stick on, to transform a face. I have a special kinship to bindis that probably deserve a separate post. I didn’t realize how much bindi related material there is in my head till I started writing this post. I have at least 3 posts worth just with reading one book!

Pottu, my doll

For instance, I had a marvelous doll named ‘Pottu’ – actually the doll was marvelous, it was made to look quite horrendous with all the bindis I gave her. I drew magnificent bindis on her everyday – one day, the sun, another day a palm tree, one day – I’d fill her forehead, face and forearms with bindis. But Pottu was my doll, and there she resides in my long-term childhood memory – a small part of our identity that only those who knew about bindis could understand. 

pixar elephant

Here was an aspect of ourself that I finally saw in a book. When my daughter showed her baby pictures to her friends, they’d ask about the drishti pottu, or the pottu on her forehead. Finally, children can show their friends what a bindi is – in a book, in an American library. I am proud of that. Like the book coming out gave us bindi-lovers a tiny nod of belonging. You can wear a sari, and a bindi, and you can just Be. 

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Picture from: A Bindi Can Be – By Suma Subramaniam, Illustrated by Kamala Nair

Thank you Suma! 

A Bindi Can Be – Written by Suma Subramaniam, Illustrated by Kamala Nair i

Now on to the book itself, A Bindi Can Be – Written by Suma Subramaniam, Illustrated by Kamala Nair it is a marvelous read. The pictures are vibrant. The joy of bindis is evident. The essence of the small dot transforming you is brilliantly done. 

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Thank you Suma – for all those children who have had the joy of drawing their beautiful bindis, or having a marvelous bindi collection, or felt curious about a friend’s bindi, this book satisfies them all.