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Reviewed by Charlotte Richardson:

Retold by Nathan Kumar Scott, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara,
The Great Race: An Indonesian Trickster Tale
Tara Books, 2011.

Ages: 3+

With The Great Race, Tara Books continues its stellar presentation of picture books illustrated by talented indigenous Indian artists. Nathan Kumar Scott retells the simple Indonesian trickster tale, a version of the tortoise and hare story. The traditional craft of illustrator Jagdish Chitara, a Waghari textile artist from Ahmedabad, is painting ritual cloths that celebrate the Mother Goddess in brilliant white, red and black. He uses the same ancient techniques and colors to depict the many stylized animal characters in this endearing folk story, his first secular project…

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Joanne Schwartz, illustrated by Laura Beingessner,
Our Corner Grocery Store
Tundra Books, 2009.

Ages 5-8

In Our Corner Grocery Store, Joanne Schwartz’s tribute to neighborhood and family, a little girl spends Saturdays with her Italian-American grandparents, who run the store referred to in the book’s title. We spend the day at the store with Anna Maria, as her Nonno and Nonna manage to fit looking after their grandchild into the many chores and relationships that their business brings. Anna Maria helps out, too, making the rows of vegetables neat and displaying the breads in their bins.

It’s not all work, though; the child also finds time to make chalk drawings on the sidewalk with her friend Charlie. After the lunch rush, Nonno makes her a special sandwich. “I bite into it and crumbs scatter over my shirt. The creamy cheese and salty meat taste fresh and delicious.” When Nonna puts together stuffed mushroom caps for dinner, young readers learn how to make the dish along with Anna Maria.

Laura Beingessner’s delicate illustrations document the waves of customers who come and go, the charming little store itself, even the steps in Nonna’s recipe. The tone of the text and pictures provides mesmerizing, relaxing encouragement to slow down and appreciate each simple task. There are no crises or plot complications in this sweet picture book. The pace is slow, the relationships are warm, and life is simple—not necessarily easy, but still, simpler than the lives of most families these days.

For parents reading to very young children, the book offers many opportunities to identify grocery items pictured individually, as well as to talk about the scenes and the people in the full page illustrations. The text is also a good challenge for precocious young readers to try out on their own.

Our Corner Grocery Store may read like a report from another world, or at least another era, for overscheduled, urban, twenty-first century parents and children. Perhaps spending a little time in such a tranquil world will bring some of its almost forgotten pleasures to precisely the harried kids and adults who need them most.

Charlotte Richardson
March 2011

Kavita Singh Kale,
Avneet Aunty’s Mobile Phone
(English-Hindi version) Tulika Publishers, India, 2006.

Ages 3-8

“Miaow! I am Chikki” says the turquoise cat on the first page of Kavita Singh Kale’s Avneet Aunty’s Mobile Phone. Chikki’s pink tongue laps at a bowl of milk; a red hand tickles her tummy; her whiskers extend from two rosy round cheeks. On the following page, we meet Gagan, a boy dressed in red polka dots and lying on an orange bed, his turquoise hat the color of his cat. By the third page, when Gagan’s grandmother appears in burgundy and pink on a purple carpet, a stairway winding up the orange wall behind her, there is no doubt that we’re in India.

And we’re prepared, a little, for the mad arrival of Avneet aunty, her pink scarf and white braid flying behind her as she rushes past Gagan and Chikki, her mouth open, her teeth showing, her glasses askew almost down to her nose ring. We’re hardly surprised when her curly-toed shoe lands on poor Chikki’s tail.

Avneet aunty is a gregarious sort, a lady who is never without her mobile phone. Good luck on Gagan and Chikki getting to hear the story his grandmother had promised to tell them. Avneet aunty only stops talking when her phone rings, and then only to begin talking again. There’s a scary moment when Chikki sails over Avneet aunty in a game of tag with Gagan, and the phone goes sailing too. Crash! But all is well, of course, in the end, in this delightfully wacky picture book.

Animation film designer Kale’s exuberant illustrations will bring characters and setting vividly alive for young children, Indian or western. The spare text, 149 words in English, the equally terse Hindi below, adds to the exoticness of her remarkable little treasure.

Tulika Publishers, based in Chennai, India, specializes in bilingual books for children, with books in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bangla. Avneet Aunty’s Mobile Phone is published in five bilingual editions (English with Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Bangla, and Hindi). It’s exciting to have a window into the multi-dimensional cultural world that Indian children experience through Tulika books. And who would have thought a western pre-schooler’s first bilingual English-Hindi book might be about a goofy lady’s cell phone?

Charlotte Richardson
March 2011

Laura E. Williams, illustrated by Craig Orback,
The Can Man
Lee and Low Books, 2010.

Ages 5-10

In Laura E. Williams’ The Can Man, a young boy awakens to compassion. Tim’s bi-racial family remembers when Mr. Peters lived in their building, so they don’t respond to him as the homeless can collector he’s become since he lost his job. Plot tension develops quickly: Tim wants a skateboard for his birthday; his family, not well off themselves, can’t afford it, and Tim’s solution is morally dubious.

Craig Orback’s respectful, sensitive oil paintings depict life in a tree-lined neighborhood of neat three-story apartment buildings. One day Tim gets an idea, and while young readers will identify with his excitement as he begins to collect cans himself to earn money, they’ll also experience an unsettling prick of conscience, for Tim hasn’t realized, as they will have, that he’s taking the cans Mr. Peters relies on for income.

The neighborhood grocer and Tim’s mom both mention that Mr. Peters usually collects those cans, but Tim’s fixation on the skateboard has deafened his conscience. It’s only when he runs into Mr. Peters himself, clutching at his tattered coat on a winter Saturday, his shopping cart nearly empty, that Tim begins to consider the consequences of his greed.

Orback and Williams, who have each won numerous awards for their respective projects, make a fine team for The Can Man. Both Mr. Peters and Tim get what they need by the end of the story. Between the lines and through the images, an unspoken message is that young people develop moral sensitivity through the example of their elders. Tim has wise role models in his mother and the grocer as well as in Mr. Peters, whose humanity shines through despite potentially embittering circumstances. Tim is a fortunate boy, and young readers will likely take in many levels of meaning from this subtle, powerful story.

Charlotte Richardson
March 2011

Baba Wagué Diakité,
A Gift from Childhood: Memories of an African Boyhood
Groundwood Books, 2010.

Ages 9-12 and up

Award-winning artist, author, musician and storyteller Baba Wagué Diakité, along with his artist wife Ronna Neuenschwander and their two daughters, now divides his time between his native Mali and Portland, Oregon. He’s a long, long way from the village life that his memoir A Gift from Childhood recounts, and yet there is this similarity: Diakité still moves between worlds, just as he did in boyhood when he was sent to the country for a traditional education under the guidance of his paternal grandparents.

Told in a rambling, folk-story style, Diakité’s narrative is generously illustrated with full page, four-color reproductions of his paintings and with his black-and-white designs in the bògòlanfini, Malian mud cloth tradition. His memoir traces the changes he undergoes, beginning as a naïve city schoolboy fresh from his widowed mother’s arms and emerging as a confident adolescent who can catch fish with his bare hands.

During his years in the village, Diakité survives malaria, learns the healing properties of local herbs from his Grandmother Sabou, and sadly watches her fail to save her own little granddaughter from an unnamed malady. Grandmother Sabou’s own fables and the family history are reported in full, italicized passages, along with such wisdom as that it’s “impossible to live through Tuesday when it’s only Monday.” When the time comes, Diakité, with other boys his age, undergoes ritual circumcision, a month-long rite of passage into manhood in the Malian culture that is described in some detail.

While this memoir’s lively writing and art will capture the imagination of middle grade readers, slightly older children will appreciate Diakité’s quirky storytelling more and will likely be less daunted by the account of his coming-of-age ritual. All children will be drawn to the wisdom of the Mali elders and their gentle ways of transmitting their culture to the next generation.

The inclusion of a map of Mali and a glossary of Mali terms, along with descriptions of Diakité’s art techniques, would have added further interest, but this beautifully illustrated glimpse into traditional Mali society, where children don’t go to school until after they are “educated,” will be a fascinating revelation to youthful readers.

Charlotte Richardson
March 2011