Little mind, big dreams

Books that keep your child's language at bedtime

I write picture books for my daughter Inara. Every page carries three lines. One in the family language, one in English letters so anybody can read it out loud, and one in English so you know what it means.

See the books Make your family's book

How the books work

Three lines on every page

A child learns a language best when the words come with colours and pictures she loves. So no page in these books asks you to read a script you do not know.

The first line is the family language in its own script. The second line is the same words in English letters, so you can say it out loud even if you never learned to read Gurmukhi or Devanagari. The third line is English, so the meaning is never a guess.

The language

ਇਨਾਰਾ ਦੀ ਮਾਂ ਬਣਾਵੇ ਰੰਗੋਲੀ

Say it out loud

Inara di Maa banaave rangoli

What it means

Inara's mother makes rangoli

From ਇਨਾਰਾ ਖੇਡੇ ਹੋਲੀ, page four

The last line of every round is almost the same every time. Stop just before the last words and let the child finish the line. After two or three rounds they will. That is the whole trick of these books.

The books

Two books, six languages each

Every edition shares the same artwork and the same family. Only the words change. A child in a Gujarati house and a child in a Nepali house get the same pictures and their own language.

The books are only made in languages where the rhyme survives. The refrain lands on the name of the festival, so it works in Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali. Where it would become a rewrite instead of a translation, we do not do it.

Inara Plays Holi

6 editions · Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali, English

On every page one more person in the family gets ready for Holi. Mumma draws the rangoli, Chachi rolls the laddu, Dadi plays the dhol, Veera mixes the colour. And every time, Inara plays Holi with one more of them.

Punjabi