Anushka Ravishankar

Anushka Ravishankar - whose recent To Market! To Market! was such an entertaining read-aloud - delivers another picture-book winner with Catch That Crocodile! When Falguni Fruitseller comes upon a crocodile in a ditch, chaos ensues, as everyone from Probin Policeman to Bhayanak Singh, the wrestler, attempts to catch it. Finally, it is little Meena who comes up with a solution...

With a rhyming text that is a pleasure to read aloud - "Wh...what! H...how? Wh...why? Wh...which? / CROCODILE! show more CROCODILE! In the ditch! / Where did it comes from? How did it come? The river is far - It couldn't have swum" - and bold illustrations in black, white and green, this appealing picture-book is another example of why I love Tara Books' children's catalogue. Creative artwork, innovative and high-quality design, and engaging narratives, are all to be found in their titles, and Catch That Crocodile! is no exception! Young readers with a taste for fun nonsense rhymes will definitely appreciate this one! show less

Anushka Ravishankar's simple rhyming text - "Sunny cats / Sad cats / Greedy cats / Bad cats / Grinning cats / Cats with scowls / Chinless cats / Cats with jowls" - is accompanied by illustrations taken from the work of a variety of tribal and folk artists from India in I Like Cats, a charming little picture-book ideally suited for feline fanciers young and old. Whether the idiosyncratic portraits reproduced here are from the Ghond people or the Sohrai, the Warli or the Meena, the result is show more arresting: a visual feast of kitty-cats - stylized, intricately decorated, and all immensely appealing!

There's not enough of a text to make a story, but the sing-song narrative of I Like Cats, with its inevitable conclusion, makes this one a fun little book to read aloud. The artwork definitely holds the attention, offering the reader something they will want to savor. It's another winner from innovative Indian children's publisher, Tara Books! show less

A young girl accompanies her mother to market, supremely conscious of the money she has been given for a treat. What will she buy? A pet, perhaps? A toy? The choices are endless, and as the girl explores the many stalls, imagining herself as everything from bangle-seller to fish, she forgets all about her purchase...

This lovely picture-book, featuring rhyming text and colorful artwork, offers young readers a joyous portrait of one girl's imaginative play. Described in a 2006 Horn Book show more article as the author who has introduced India's children to the genre of literary nonsense, Ravishankar delivers an immensely readable tale in To Market! To Market!, while Italian illustrator Emanuele Scanziani's artwork fairly leaps off the page, adding to the sense of motion and fun. show less

Indian children's author Anyshka Ravishankar retells a traditional Japanese folktale in this engaging picture-book. A young boy with a penchant for drawing cats at all times, Akiro is the despair of his parents. Eventually they send him to the local priest to be educated, but eventually this man concludes that Akiro doesn't have the right temperament. Traveling to another village, the boy finds a seemingly abandoned temple, and draws cats all over the rice paper screens, before going to show more sleep in a cupboard. Overnight, the cats come to life and slay the rat-demon haunting the temple, thereby restoring it to its owners. Turning down an offer to be trained as a replacement for the head priest of this second temple, Akiro continues with his cat-drawing ways, eventually becoming a famous artist...

The story contained in The Boy Who Drew Cats is a well-known one, and I have seen it retold many times. Here in the west, the most famous retelling is probably that done by Lafcadio Hearn, although I have also encountered it in Natalia Belting's collection, Cat Tales, as well as in picture-book versions by Margaret Hodges and Aki Sogabe, Arthur Levine and Frédéric Clément, and David Johnson. I enjoyed Anushka Ravishankar's telling here, and appreciated German illustrator Christine Kastl's accompanying artwork. Having read a number of American versions of this Japanese tale, it was interesting to encounter an Indian one, demonstrating how folklore travels, and how appealing it can be, across cultural and geographic boundaries. Recommended to young folklore enthusiasts, as well as cat-lovers. show less