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Fun in-Toto
The long lazy days of summer are over. School has begun and if you aren’t feeling too cheery pick up these two new books. The Hair Scare and A Tale of Tails are two short stories replete with fun, adventure and activities galore.
The Hair Scare is about Toto whose uniform with its warm blazer might be a treat but whose hair is a compete mess. Long was cool wasn’t it? But mum didn’t think so. Then the funniest thing happened. As he was walking along to school a little bird came and laid eggs in his hair. Now any other boy would have taken them out but not Toto. He slept on a chair, missed his warm bed terribly but didn’t complain till the chick hatched, grew strong and flew away. What did you think Toto did right after? The illustrations by Saumya Agarwal are a treat.
A Tale of Tails again has Toto with his sibling Simi. When the story opens Toto and Simi aren’t happy. They think it’s the grownups who have all the fun. Till they decide to take a walk into a jungle and nature unrolls a story book. Nature too has a sense of fun and all the animals they meet have exchanged their tails! A leopard with a fish tail can be funny. But how did this happen? Strange things can happen when you make wishes without thinking and through these unhappy animals Toto and Simi learn, perhaps, the most important lessons of their lives. Again, the pictures by Saumya Agarwal steal the show. THE HAIR SCARE by Sujoyita Ghosh; A TALE OF TAILS by Aditi Mazumdar Dhar, Rs 50 each, Wisdom Tree Books
An excerpt from The Hair Scare:
When Toto reached home, he signalled to his mother that there was a cuckoo sitting on his head. But when Mamma peeked into the messy hair, she found no bird. Instead, there were two little eggs! They were greenish blue in colour and had tiny dots al over. The cuckoo had left its eggs on Toto’s head, thinking it was a nice and cozy nest! Cuckoos always leave their eggs in other birds’ nests and know that the babies will soon hatch under the care of the host bird. The only thing different here was that this was not a nest but Toto’s shaggy hair! Mamma wanted to take the eggs right away, but Toto insisted on keeping them on his head, little realising the inconvenience it would cause him. That night Toto slept on a straight-backed wooden chair so that the eggs wouldn’t fall off his hair.
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