Birds around us
Title: The Paradise Flycatcher
Author: Deepak
Dalal
Illustrations: Krishna Bala Shenoi
Series: Feather Tales
Publisher: Puffin Books - An imprint of Penguin
Random House
ISBN: 978-0-143-44174-8
Year of publishing: 2018
This book takes the bird series ahead, even the
names of characters have been retained. There would be few other books on
similar lines; books that talk of the animal world using the fiction route, are based on quality research and
colourfully portrayed. Books which make natural history interesting. Here woven
within a story, where birds talk, is ‘information’ about birds - Hornbills do
not mix with other birds, Ioras usually fly short distances while Minivets can
cover much longer distances.
The diversity an urban garden can possess is
brought out. The book makes us aware to the wealth around us and encourages us
to devote more time and attention to the elements of nature around us. We could
do good to observe, listen, smell, touch the plants, butterflies, spiders,
damselflies and others; to just let them be. This book could also help serve
the purpose of text-book which inculcates love for creatures we share our world
with.
Like the previous books, the author takes us
deep or should I say high into the bird world. Birds possess human attributes –
they talk, quarrel, support, snigger, meet and more, all in their own way. This
line captures the book’s essence ‘For
Mitalee the sound was nothing more than chirping, but for the birds assembled
there, every cheep, chirrup and twitter made perfect sense’.
The manner in which the author treats humans is
equally interesting. Refreshingly parents are not on a pedestal, ‘neither Chintu nor his equally nasty father’.
That humans are good at messing up nature, at intruding in forests and leaving
behind a mess, is brought out in ‘in a
forest whatever they do stands out’. Little in forest which nature creates
is in a straight line!
The plusses of the previous books – lively illustrations
and crisp editing have been retained. The author has a way with words – the Himalayas,
for example, are ‘impossible mountains’.
And of course the book boasts of a beginning which has the reader hooked on
from the initial line.
There, of course, are questions. At one level
could the book have been shorter by a few pages as also free from clichés like ‘the mighty Brahmaputra’? At another
level why introduce someone as a ‘mean
tempered boy’ and refer to him has ‘dangerous’?
Like all of us would he too not be in the grey? Is this also not the need of
the hour – to make the younger ones aware that the world around is all grey and
not black and white?
All said and done it will be good for adults and
children to read books which, without preaching, teach them of nature. Books
which may remind some of us of Enid Blyton; albeit an Indian version peppered with
natural history.
Pages: 128
Price: 250/-
For: 8 years and above
EBook available: Yes
Previous books in the series:
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