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Do!
Do! is a set of action pictures rendered in the elegantly minimalist Warli style of tribal art. It introduces basic verbs to the young reader through a series of delicately drawn pictograms, which both illustrate the verb and tell a further string of stories. Every page or pair of pages invites the child to explore a busy world and make up her own tales. The art conjures up a world teeming with human figures, animals, plants, and birds.
The illustrations in Do! were made by people belonging to a tribal community in Maharashtra, in western India. Ramesh Hengadi, Rasika Hengadi, Shantaram Dhadpe, and Kusum Dhadpe are the artists featured in this book.
Do! was conceived of by Gita Wolf, who has written more than seventeen books for children and adults. A highly original and creative voice in contemporary Indian publishing, she has pursued her interest in exploring and experimenting with the form of the book and its status as a revered cultural object.
The illustrations in Do! were made by people belonging to a tribal community in Maharashtra, in western India. Ramesh Hengadi, Rasika Hengadi, Shantaram Dhadpe, and Kusum Dhadpe are the artists featured in this book.
Do! was conceived of by Gita Wolf, who has written more than seventeen books for children and adults. A highly original and creative voice in contemporary Indian publishing, she has pursued her interest in exploring and experimenting with the form of the book and its status as a revered cultural object.
40 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 2, 2020
It's another gorgeous picture-book from Tara Books, the Chennai-based Indian press that is one of my favorite smaller, independent publishers! Their books are always superb, with interesting stories (or non-stories), beautiful artwork, and innovative designs: fold-out, accordion-books like
Hen-sparrow Turns Purple
, or those created with homemade papers, like this one. Gita Wolf's Do! is a celebration of action, a list of verbs, and - with its thick brown paper, and detailed Warli art in white ink - a feast for the senses!
Pairing a single word - work, read, climb - on each page, with a multitude of stick-figures in action, all painted in white in the style traditionally used by Warli women to decorate their homes, this is a book to pore over, examining the artwork in its minutest detail, rather than to read. It can be used as a concept book, or as an introduction to a lovely style of art that is described on the back cover as resembling pictograms. No wonder I love it! Highly recommended to anyone who appreciates the craft of book-making, or loves handmade paper and books, and gorgeous artwork!
Pairing a single word - work, read, climb - on each page, with a multitude of stick-figures in action, all painted in white in the style traditionally used by Warli women to decorate their homes, this is a book to pore over, examining the artwork in its minutest detail, rather than to read. It can be used as a concept book, or as an introduction to a lovely style of art that is described on the back cover as resembling pictograms. No wonder I love it! Highly recommended to anyone who appreciates the craft of book-making, or loves handmade paper and books, and gorgeous artwork!
December 29, 2009
Every year almost all the children's book publishers put out a whole lotta picture book schlock alongside some tiny gems. If you are a librarian, your job is to find those gems and to direct parents and teachers to them. Think of it as a game. It's like wading through muck to find a glint of gold. You can find it, but you have to be patient (and try to remember what gold looks like too). Particularly here in America, we children's librarians see lots of junk that looks exactly the same. So when I find myself handling a book like Do! I am almost at a loss to comprehend what I have before me. Tara Books is the only publisher in America that puts out handmade picture books straight out of places like Chennai, India. In Do! you have a fun concept book from the Warli tribal community. It's the kind of book that serves to remind us that there's more to literature for children than pretty sparkles and tales we've heard many times before. Do! I guarantee, is like nothing you'll find on your library shelves right now.
Action and rest are the name of the game in this fun picture book written by three artists of the Warli tribal community in Maharashtra, Western India. Open it up and you find yourself looking at a series of two-page spreads. On each one is at least one word describing what is going on. "Talk". "Cook". "Work". "Read". Some words are benign like "Fish". Others violent like "Fight". Through it all, multiple figures that are hardly more than stick people show the basic action that happens in their little village when accompanied by their livestock. A section at the end shows readers how to draw their own Warli-styled characters, and a final note discusses how the book was made and where it is from.
Picture books. Those funny little objects that we all deal with at some point in our lifetime, though few of us stop to think them through. What is the point of a picture book? To learn to read? To learn to love to read? To teach? To inform? To amuse? I hold Do! and I start to wonder. The book could do any of these things, but it seems to primarily want to allow the child reader the chance to pore over the pages, searching out all the little details. The book itself calls the Warli style of art "almost like pictograms." The characters are easily recognizable and even if the story didn't explain what was happening on a given page, kids could probably figure it out. That might not be a bad application of the book for the non-verbal, actually. Parents could turn to a two-page spread of something like the word "sit" and ask kids to figure out what all the characters and animals have in common.
The idea of a "handmade book" is its own problem. Is that a good or a bad thing? We think of "handmade" and sometimes our minds consider craftsmanship. Other times we think of slave labor. In the case of "Do!" we're dealing with the former. As the book's afterword on Warli Art explains, "Today it is not just the women, but many men who paint . . . and the art is used commercially." In the particular case of this title, each book has been silk-screen printed and bound by hand. Some editions even sport a little additional slip of paper that shows the process from screenprinting to typesetting to binding to stitching. The result is a sturdy, well-made book, with a cover of a deep chocolatey brown. There is no slipcover, and the endpapers show the repeated images of the circular dancing and folks reading in trees. I was also much taken with the color of the pages. We're so used to the bleached white of a book's page that for some reasons we're caught off-guard when confronted by brown. In "Do!" the words and pictures are of a thick white ink that shows up brilliantly against the muted paper landscape.
I read and reread Do! a couple times and you know what it reminded me of? Busy books where there's lots to see. Where's Waldo or any of the Anno books (Anno's U.S.A., Anno's Journey, etc.). Certainly the characters here are hardly more than stick figures but they convey everything they need to with as few lines as possible. Now I can tell you right here and now that this book won't be to everyone's taste. Hand it to the child who only loves pink sparkles and you will learn all too soon what they think of it. This is a book for the curious child. The one who's always trying to find the hidden details and images in their picture books. The inquisitive one who will stare rapt at these pages for hours on end. Let your kids be world travelers. Introduce them to Do!.
Ages 3-8.
Action and rest are the name of the game in this fun picture book written by three artists of the Warli tribal community in Maharashtra, Western India. Open it up and you find yourself looking at a series of two-page spreads. On each one is at least one word describing what is going on. "Talk". "Cook". "Work". "Read". Some words are benign like "Fish". Others violent like "Fight". Through it all, multiple figures that are hardly more than stick people show the basic action that happens in their little village when accompanied by their livestock. A section at the end shows readers how to draw their own Warli-styled characters, and a final note discusses how the book was made and where it is from.
Picture books. Those funny little objects that we all deal with at some point in our lifetime, though few of us stop to think them through. What is the point of a picture book? To learn to read? To learn to love to read? To teach? To inform? To amuse? I hold Do! and I start to wonder. The book could do any of these things, but it seems to primarily want to allow the child reader the chance to pore over the pages, searching out all the little details. The book itself calls the Warli style of art "almost like pictograms." The characters are easily recognizable and even if the story didn't explain what was happening on a given page, kids could probably figure it out. That might not be a bad application of the book for the non-verbal, actually. Parents could turn to a two-page spread of something like the word "sit" and ask kids to figure out what all the characters and animals have in common.
The idea of a "handmade book" is its own problem. Is that a good or a bad thing? We think of "handmade" and sometimes our minds consider craftsmanship. Other times we think of slave labor. In the case of "Do!" we're dealing with the former. As the book's afterword on Warli Art explains, "Today it is not just the women, but many men who paint . . . and the art is used commercially." In the particular case of this title, each book has been silk-screen printed and bound by hand. Some editions even sport a little additional slip of paper that shows the process from screenprinting to typesetting to binding to stitching. The result is a sturdy, well-made book, with a cover of a deep chocolatey brown. There is no slipcover, and the endpapers show the repeated images of the circular dancing and folks reading in trees. I was also much taken with the color of the pages. We're so used to the bleached white of a book's page that for some reasons we're caught off-guard when confronted by brown. In "Do!" the words and pictures are of a thick white ink that shows up brilliantly against the muted paper landscape.
I read and reread Do! a couple times and you know what it reminded me of? Busy books where there's lots to see. Where's Waldo or any of the Anno books (Anno's U.S.A., Anno's Journey, etc.). Certainly the characters here are hardly more than stick figures but they convey everything they need to with as few lines as possible. Now I can tell you right here and now that this book won't be to everyone's taste. Hand it to the child who only loves pink sparkles and you will learn all too soon what they think of it. This is a book for the curious child. The one who's always trying to find the hidden details and images in their picture books. The inquisitive one who will stare rapt at these pages for hours on end. Let your kids be world travelers. Introduce them to Do!.
Ages 3-8.
December 14, 2025
Precioso este libro, lo leí en la edición que viene con el texto (los verbos) en español y náhuatl.
Las ilustraciones maravillosas.
Las ilustraciones maravillosas.
March 27, 2015
Aditi De reviews the book on Goodbooks: "Minimally worded picture books are often more powerful than ten thousand long-winded words. Such as? The wacky board books for children by Argentinian artist Isol (winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2013), especially her two-way multifold classic, It’s Useful to have a Duck/It’s Useful to have a Boy. Or David Shannon’s brilliant No, David!
In India, most publishers hesitate to concentrate on visuals to engage young minds. Or to explore the riches of indigenous art forms to tell a story. Maybe because of the prohibitive cost of colour printing? Even Uma Krishnaswamy’s brilliant And Land was Born in the Bhilala style for Tulika Publishers had a strong folktale by Sandhya Rao as its base. Against this backdrop, Tara Books creatively pioneered the use of Gond, Warli, Mithila and other folk styles in internationally acclaimed, hand-crafted books such as The London Jungle Book, That’s How I See Things, Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit or The Nightlife of Trees over the last two decades."
Click here to read the full review: http://goodbooks.in/node/7047
In India, most publishers hesitate to concentrate on visuals to engage young minds. Or to explore the riches of indigenous art forms to tell a story. Maybe because of the prohibitive cost of colour printing? Even Uma Krishnaswamy’s brilliant And Land was Born in the Bhilala style for Tulika Publishers had a strong folktale by Sandhya Rao as its base. Against this backdrop, Tara Books creatively pioneered the use of Gond, Warli, Mithila and other folk styles in internationally acclaimed, hand-crafted books such as The London Jungle Book, That’s How I See Things, Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit or The Nightlife of Trees over the last two decades."
Click here to read the full review: http://goodbooks.in/node/7047
February 10, 2010
Hand printed and bound, the only-white illustrations on brown handmade paper are in traditional Warli (India) style, which are a little like pictograms. 20 words, (all verbs) like climb, fall, play, carry, dance) usually 1 per spread, but a few spreads have 2 or 3 words. The real delight is in the pictures and the stories one finds in them.
April 15, 2021
Tara Books is an Indian publisher that's a commune of artists, writers, and designers who make remarkable handmade books: books that make me feel the excitement I felt as a child.
Go! is a delightful book - simple white illustrations on brown paper telling stories with the occasional word. Aimed at young children but delightful for adults too!
Go! is a delightful book - simple white illustrations on brown paper telling stories with the occasional word. Aimed at young children but delightful for adults too!
March 2, 2011
i liked the way the pic book ties in with ancient indian art.. a pic book for a broad age range!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews