Yesterday was the start of Diwali, so I went in search of some books set in India or by Indian authors to share at storytime and this is what I found.  I’ve become a big fan of Anushka Ravishankar’s books, mostly due to the detailed and colorful folk illustrations. The text although imaginative, is pretty flat (possibly something is lost through translation), but they are wonderous to look at.

One, Two, Tree

 

Excuse me, is this India?

 



What can you hide in, blow your nose on, make a hammock out of, and still look beautiful in? A Sari, as demonstrated by Sandhya Rao in My Mother’s Sari. And lastly, a Benjali trickster tale, The Ghost Catcher by Martha Hamilton in which an altruistic barber encounters a couple of ghosts after his wife gives him an ultimatum.