Anandi's Rainbow

Pick this book up for a charming story of a little girl. It's for all those who love a pleasant tale.

Anandi's Rainbow

Anup Ray

National Book Trust

pp 21

ISBN 81-237-4221-5

Rs 15

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Virtually every time one goes past the National Book Trust headquarters in Delhi, the memory of their bookstore slams the brakes on any forward movement. This, of course, is for a number of reasons. One of the foremost is the vast amount of space devoted to children’s books. Any bookstore with a reasonable number of titles and shelf space dedicated to young readers and writers for young people, prod interest awake. The National Book Trust offers a multiple whammy: NBT books for children come not only in English, but in various regional languages.

They are, as a rule, easy to handle, small books that seem to say, pick me up, and I’ll give you lots of joy without eating into your time. For instance, the one we’re reviewing this week, is less than two dozen pages. And yet, they are almost always a pleasure to read, well written and with a clever or a warm twist to the tale.

“Anandi’s Rainbow” caught my eye for one of the wrong reasons you could think of for a book review: it reminded me of the famous Anandi Gopal, the extraordinary woman who studied to become a doctor in those days when not too many Indian men could dream of such a profession. The book, of course, shares nothing but the protagonist’s name.