Tara Books

Sometimes it takes a foreign-language author or illustrator to redefine what a children’s book can be. The Barber’s Dilemma And Other Stories From Manmaru Street, written and illustrated by Japanese artist Koki Oguma, and here translated by Gita Wolf, is one of the strangest, funniest and most beautiful picturebooks I’ve come across. It comprises a series of vignettes, each accompanied by its own illustration, allegedly concerning characters from the artist-author’s neighbourhood in Tokyo.

What happens when monkey twins meet? What about this couple of birds? And that pair of whales? Well, that’s for the reader to decide! Part storytelling, part activity book, Dhawni Shah and Bhaddu Hamir’s TWINS gives free rein to its readers’ imagination and provides a beautiful and smart template for their stories to take shape. TWINS takes a deceptively easy concept and puts uninhibited creativity at its center, making of the reader a central part of the narrative. As parents are reminded in the preface ‘there is no right or wrong way to use this book.’

In 1880 Joel Chandler Harris, an American folklorist, published Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings; The Folklore of the Old Plantation. The stories, featuring Brer Rabbit and other creatures, had their roots in oral Afro-Caribbean folktales that had been retold and embellished by slaves in southern USA.

That it is printed on a Risograph, an eco-friedly, low tech printing system using soy ink which produces books in which the images are all slightly different, is a great reason to rush out and purchase Hic?, produced by that splendidly innovative Indian publisher, Tara Books. But of course, it is the delightful images, allied to an entertaining saga of a little girl who seeks a cure for her hiccups, that is the first reason for anyone who cares about good books to add this to their collection.