As conscious parents who want to introduce quality regional language books to our littles, we are always on the lookout for good baby literature.
Ditto me! I was hunting for good Tamil and Hindi books to introduce to baby V. There are quite a few publishers who do this ( we will be covering all in a series) but most of them were for slightly older toddlers.
That is when I chanced upon T4Tales, or rather Tiny Tots Tiny Tales.
Catchy cover, eh?
Retold by Pridhee Kapoor Gupta and illustrated by Alicia D’souza, this book is a must have for your child’s library.
Read on to find out more about the book and author.
Listing down what we loved about this book
- Extremely catchy illustrations, including the bright cover page.
- Interactive. – So this doesn’t just have lift the flaps! From opening doors, to pouring 5 spoons of medicine to measuring the temperature, this one has a wide range of activities.
- Sturdy. I know all board books are sturdy, but this one takes the cake. It is a permanent fixture in our diaper bag and wr have carried it along to doctor visits and vacays and it stays perfect.
- Hindi rewrite : As a multilingual family, with baby V exposed to 3 different languages everyday, it became important to incorporate these languages in her favourite daily activity- reading. This is one of the best ‘baby’ multilingual board books Ive come across.
- Lines in Hindi as well as English. Usually multilingual books carry the lines in the regional language and the English translation. Pridhee has taken the hard route and used the Latin script for the same words. Totally encourages us to literally read in Hindi.
- Price – At an attractive price of 350 INR, it is a steal deal.
We loved the book so much, that I had to talk to the brain behind it.
I was in awe of this superwoman- mom of two, molecular biologist, lecturer turned author ( My God woman! Is there anything you cant do?).
Having lived(flourished) in Australia, she moved back to India to be closer to family. She wanted to expose her daughters to quality Indian children books and thought she would find them here. Well, those who cant find it, create. And create she did!
She says, ” There are 3 kinds of book reading parents.
1. Who do not need a book to tell stories.
2. Who need that perfect book to initiate reading.
3. Who use books that are available.”
Take a guess as to which category she belongs to?
Lucky for us, she believed in that perfect book, and set off to create one.
There are 3 titles available currently – Gol Mol, Das din and Bolo kya.
T4 Tales do retellings as well as original stories.
Currently, they are considering venturing into other regional languages ( thanks to pressure from crazy parents like me). Go ahead, do tell us which language you’d like to see this translated to.
And keep watching this space for a fun announcement.