The Old Animals' Forest Band

by Sirish Rao, Durga Bai (Illustrations)

In this Indian version of the well-known Brothers Grimm tale, four animals—a sleepy dog, an unmilkable cow, a weak-kneed donkey, and a confused cockerel—are thrown out by ungrateful masters. But once they come together in the forest, they prove they’re anything but useless . . . Sirish Rao is an exciting new voice in Indian writing. His eighteen titles range from children’s books to collections of pop art, and several have won international awards. Artist Durga Bai is a young tribal artist of the Gond tradition of central India. She is the winner of the 2008 Bologna Ragazzi Award for New Horizons.

Genres: Picture Books

40 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book about animals who were deemed not useful anymore finding joy in being together and singing. The story was good.

The illustrations are very weird. It's an interesting style just being outlines of shapes but with random patterns inside. I would have liked the pattern idea better if it stayed consistent for the same animals and people throughout the text, but it didn't. The actual illustrations aren't amazing but more childlike. The thing that I liked the best was the idea of creating characters that are just different pattern designs repeated. It was very interesting.

[Mandy E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many things might attract an author of children's books to rewrite the Grimm's tale "The Musicians from Bremen": it's curiously modern message of animal rights, the strangely humanist movement of the animals from obsolete resources to valuable, not to mention independent, social participants, and the delightful possibilities it offers the illustrator. It might also be a particular poignant story to retell in the current atmosphere of Indian economics (both author and illustrator are Indian). But for some reason, at least in its English incarnation, Rao's storytelling is flat and lifeless in spite of Bai's extraordinary illustrations (which are, in all honesty, the most important features of the book to my two-year-olds).