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Category: Excerpts

On the cusp of adventure

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

The battle for Camp Jupiter is over. New Rome is safe. Tarquin and his army of the undead have been defeated. Somehow Apollo has made it out alive, with a little bit of help from the Hunters of Artemis.

But though the battle may have been won, the war is far from over.

Now Apollo and Meg must get ready for the final – and, let’s face it, probably fatal – adventure. They must face the last emperor, the terrifying Nero, and destroy him once and for all.

Here’s a glimpse into the action-packed world of The Tower of Nero, the final novel in The Trials of Apollo series.

 

**

 

WHEN TRAVELLING THROUGH WASHINGTON, DC, one expects to see a few snakes in human clothing. Still, I was concerned when a two-headed boa constrictor boarded our train at Union Station.

The creature had threaded himself through a blue silk business suit, looping his body into the sleeves and trouser legs to approximate human limbs. Two heads protruded from the collar of his shirt like twin periscopes. He moved with remarkable grace for what was basically an oversize balloon animal, taking a seat at the opposite end of the coach, facing our direction.

The other passengers ignored him. No doubt the Mist warped their perceptions, making them see just another commuter. The snake made no threatening moves. He didn’t even glance at us. For all I knew, he was simply a working-stiff monster on his way home.

And yet I could not assume . . .
I whispered to Meg, ‘I don’t want to alarm you –’ ‘Shh,’ she said.

front cover of The Trials of Apollo
The Tower of Nero || Rick Riordan

Meg took the quiet-car rules seriously. Since we’d boarded, most of the noise in the coach had consisted of Meg shushing me every time I spoke, sneezed or cleared my throat.

‘But there’s a monster,’ I persisted.

She looked up from her complimentary Amtrak magazine, raising an eyebrow above her rhinestone-studded cat-eye glasses. Where?

I chin-pointed towards the creature. As our train pulled away from the station, his left head stared absently out of the window. His right head flicked its forked tongue into a bottle of water held in the loop that passed for his hand.

‘It’s an amphisbaena,’ I whispered, then added helpfully, ‘a snake with a head at each end.’

Meg frowned, then shrugged, which I took to mean Looks peaceful enough. Then she went back to reading.

I suppressed the urge to argue. Mostly because I didn’t want to be shushed again.

I couldn’t blame Meg for wanting a quiet ride. In the past week, we had battled our way through a pack of wild centaurs in Kansas, faced an angry famine spirit at the World’s Largest Fork in Springfield, Missouri (I did not get a selfie), and outrun a pair of blue Kentucky drakons that had chased us several times around Churchill Downs. After all that, a two-headed snake in a suit was perhaps not cause for alarm. Certainly, he wasn’t bothering us at the moment.

I tried to relax.

Meg buried her face in her magazine, enraptured by an article on urban gardening. My young companion had grown taller in the months that I’d known her, but she was still compact enough to prop her red high-tops comfortably on the seatback in front of her. Comfortable for her, I mean, not for me or the other passengers. Meg hadn’t changed her shoes since our run around the racetrack, and they looked and smelled like the back end of a horse.

At least she had traded her tattered green dress for Dollar General jeans and a green VNICORNES IMPERANT! T-shirt she’d bought at the Camp Jupiter gift shop. With her pageboy haircut beginning to grow out and an angry red zit erupting on her chin, she no longer looked like a kinder-gartener. She looked almost her age: a sixth-grader entering the circle of hell known as puberty.

I had not shared this observation with Meg. For one thing, I had my own acne to worry about. For another thing, as my master, Meg could literally order me to jump out of the window and I would be forced to obey.

The train rolled through the suburbs of Washington. The late-afternoon sun flickered between the buildings like the lamp of an old movie projector. It was a wonderful time of day, when a sun god should be wrapping up his work, heading to the old stables to park his chariot, then kicking back at his palace with a goblet of nectar, a few dozen adoring nymphs and a new season of The Real Goddesses of Olympus to binge-watch.

Not for me, though. I got a creaking seat on an Amtrak train and hours to binge-watch Meg’s stinky shoes.

At the opposite end of the car, the amphisbaena still made no threatening moves . . . unless one considered drinking water from a non-reusable bottle an act of aggression.

Why, then, were my neck hairs tingling?

I couldn’t regulate my breathing. I felt trapped in my window seat.

**

 

 

 

 

Boyhood dreams and nostalgia

Posted on by prhi-dev

Sixteen-year-old Ruskin, after having finally finished his school, is living with his stepfather and mother at the Old Station Canteen in Dehradun and planning to leave for England to embark upon his writing journey. But the prospect of saying goodbye to the warm, sunny shores of India looms large.

Following the trail of Looking for the Rainbow, Till the Clouds Roll By and Coming Round the Mountain, A Song of India is the story of Ruskin Bond’s last year in Dehra, the year that later became the basis for his  first novel, The Room on the Roof. It’s about love, friendship, dreaming, hoping and just being sixteen. Read on for nostalgic look at being young and in the throes of first love in 1950s India.

—

Raj was a couple of years older than me, studying for her BA exams. She wasn’t pretty, but she had a lively, expressive face and an athletic build. She was also her college’s badminton champion. Every evening, she practised on the court she had laid out in front of their house. There was just enough room for it, as a tall hedge separated their place from the rest of the compound. Sometimes I’d watched her playing with her friends. She moved about the court like a gazelle; and she had long arms, which enabled her to reach the shuttlecock from difficult angles. Barefooted, she darted backwards and forwards without seeming to tire. ‘Do you play badminton?’ she asked me after lunch that day. ‘Not after eating half a dozen puris,’ I said from the comfort of an easy chair in the veranda. ‘I’ve only played once or twice.’ ‘Come in the evening and play with me,’ she said.

A Song of India || Ruskin Bond

So that evening, I borrowed Ranbir’s racket and spent an exhausting hour chasing a shuttlecock all over the badminton court. Raj had me on the run from the start of the proceedings, and there was no let up. The score? I think it was 20–0, 20–1 or something like that, in her favour of course. I spent a lot of time picking up the shuttlecock and politely handing it back to her. She offered me a return match the next day, and I was foolish enough to accept. Another love game! And the same the day after. Was I a glutton for punishment, or was I falling in love?

Not head over heels in love, but something more gradual—the pleasure of being in her presence, of the occasional contact, of the sparkle in her eyes. It was a friendship with a girl, and for Raj it was just that—a friendship—while for me, it was something a little more intense. One day, quite by chance, a small sewing needle lodged itself in her heel when she was running barefoot down the veranda steps. I did my best to extract it, taking her foot in my hands and using a pair of tweezers. But I was no doctor, and the needle had made its way further into her foot. We left it alone, assuming it would work its way out. But it appeared to be travelling further up her leg. I had heard of people who had suddenly fallen dead through having needles embedded in various vital organs. Muscular contractions could send an accidentally stuck needle further up her body, working its way between the muscles for considerable distances, until it reached the heart . . .

When I mentioned this to Raj’s parents, they immediately took her to Civil Hospital and showed her to a surgeon. With the help of an X-ray, he located the needle (now in the region of her calf muscle), removed it surgically and sent her home with her foot in a bandage. No badminton for a week. Respite for me from all those love games. But true love it was, for every day I would find myself on a chair beside her, attempting to entertain her with my bedside chatter. I was much better at conversation than at badminton. And after some time, the conversations became quite personal. Raj told me that she wasn’t interested in marriage—she longed for a career in badminton or athletics—but that her parents were already on the lookout for a suitable young man for her. After all, she was nineteen going on twenty.

‘Too young to get married,’ I said, from my seventeen years of acquired wisdom. (I had completed seventeen that summer.) ‘Wait till you’re twenty-five. By then I’ll be twenty-two, rich and famous, and you can marry me and I’ll be your badminton and long-distance running coach!’

 —

 

A heartwarming addition to Ruskin Bond’s boyhood memoirs, A Song of India is a delightful celebration of the beginning of the country’s most loved writing journeys!

Helmets, flutes and an adventure of our own!

Posted on by swara

We are all set to witness an AWESOME FRIENDLY EPIC adventure that our AWESOME friend Greg Heffley has invited us on.

But first, we need to get to know our companions! Scroll down below to meet ROLAND THE KIND, who really, really wants an adventure of his own!

*

Once upon a time in a land far away there lived a boy named Roland. And Roland was a very good boy.
Back then school hadn’t been invented yet so most kids worked on their family farms all day.
But Roland’s parents thought it was important for their son to get an education and to learn to play an instrument. So he spent his days inside, reading books and practicing the flute.
Awesome Friendly Adventure || Jeff Kinney
Roland didn’t like practicing the flute very much but he never complained because he wanted to be a good son.
It was a dangerous time when ogres and giants roamed the land. So Roland’s parents liked him to stay indoors where it was safe, especially after dark.
Roland had never even been outside his village. He wished he could go on adventures like his grandpa Bampy the Brave who used to fight monsters and search for treasure.
But Bampy was never the same after he got back from his adventures. And Roland knew that was because Bampy didn’t always wear his helmet and he got hit on the head a few too many times.
Roland promised his parents that if he went on an adventure he’d ALWAYS wear a helmet and he’d make good choices. But they said he’d be much safer staying at home and practicing his flute.
So the only thing Roland could do was read stories about Bampy and imagine what it would be like to have adventures of his OWN.
*

 

Will Roland the Kind get to have an AWESOME ADVENTURE of his own?

Insights into elephant conservation in India

Posted on by penguin

From the Green Revolution to the National Action Plan on Climate Change, Unearthed: An Environmental History of Independent India chronicles the country’s historical movements and significant green missions since 1947. Interspersed with lots of trivia, tales of eco-heroes and humorous cartoons, this easy-to-read account uncovers the story of a past with the hope that we will rewrite India’s future.

Read below an excerpt from the book:

Elephants are the world’s largest land animals and they need a large area to live freely—not just a forest, but entire landscapes or ranges with paths they can use to walk from one place to another in search of food and water. After all, their needs are also big. An adult Asian elephant can eat more than 100 kilograms of food and drink more than 100 litres of water in a day. Just one forest is not enough to meet these needs. That’s why they walk hundreds of kilometres every year, allowing forests along their way to regenerate in time for them to return several months later. In the first few decades after Independence, India was on a development drive. Land was cleared to grow crops, natural forests were replaced by plantations or mined to support industry, rivers were dammed, roads were built, factories, power transmission lines and railway lines were set up in more places and the human population began to explode. No one really thought about leaving room for elephants. As their habitats were lost to development, cases of human-elephant conflict began to rise. Among the most common forms of this conflict was crop-raiding. Hungry elephants found an easy supply of food in farmlands. So, they ransacked crops worth a lot of money and sometimes ended up injuring and killing villagers. In retaliation, angry villagers slaughtered elephants by poisoning or electrocuting them.

States found themselves struggling endlessly with this mammoth problem. Finally, in 1989, the central government set up a task force to look into the details of the problems being reported by different states. Among other things, the task force found that elephants had disappeared from many places in which they were once found. It also noted that the wildlife reserves set aside during Project Tiger  in 1973 were woefully inadequate for elephants. Conserving elephants meant that India needed to think big. In 1992, the government launched Project Elephant to save its gentle giants.

Saving Elephant Habitats

The task force had identified landscapes inhabited by elephants across India. These included the forest habitats of elephants, as well as corridors or routes they used to walk from one forest to another in search of food and water. One of the first strategies of Project Elephant was to set aside forests in different landscapes as elephant reserves, fortified with plant varieties that could serve as food. It also sought to secure the corridors connecting these reserves to each other. The idea was to limit the need for elephants to venture into surrounding human habitats for food and water. In 2001, Singhbhum in Jharkhand was officially declared the first elephant reserve of India. Sprawling over thousands of square kilometres across three south-eastern districts of the state, the reserve was part of an elephant range that also included other reserves in West Bengal, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Today, elephant reserves cover more than 65,000 square kilometres of forest land spread across eleven elephant ranges in different states in north-western, north-eastern, central and southern India. Meanwhile, more than 100 elephant corridors have been identified throughout the country with the help of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). Unfortunately, less than 30% of elephant reserves and corridors fall within legally protected areas of India. This has made it easy for land in elephant ranges to be diverted for everything from mining and agriculture to building tourist resorts and constructing roads. More than 60% of elephant corridors have a national or state highway passing through them while about twenty of them have railway lines. Hundreds of elephants have been killed in train accidents over the years. One of the worst accidents took place in 2013, when a passenger train passing through the Chapramari Forest in northern West Bengal failed to apply brakes on time and rammed into a herd of elephants that were foraging near and on the tracks. Five adult elephants and two calves were killed while ten elephants were injured. Various measures have been tried to prevent train accidents. These include reducing train speeds in elephant corridors and activating early warning systems. For example, in Tamil Nadu, sensors mounted on poles along the railway track monitor elephant movement. If an elephant sets off a sensor, a text message is sent to the railway staff and the animals are chased away. Railways have also experimented with some creative solutions such as devices that produce the buzzing sound of honeybees to keep elephants at bay. Long-term solutions include building overpasses or underpasses as safe crossing points for elephants, raising the railway track, or removing tracks from accident-prone areas.

A shrinking range, intersected by an ever-growing number of human settlements, farmlands, plantations, roads and railway lines, remains the biggest threat for elephants and a major reason behind human-elephant conflicts.

 

Get your copy of Unearthed: The Environmental History of Independent India here

Meet the king and queen of Ullas!

Posted on by swara

Have you wondered how the onion got so many layers? The story begins with the king and queen of the kingdom of Ullas, who really wanted a child.

Have a peek below!

 

**

 

The kingdom of Ullas was very prosperous. The subjects were happy, the farmers had grown a bumper crop and the kingdom was surrounded by friendly allies. But the king and queen of Ullas were very sad. Their sadness seemed to envelop them wherever they went. This was because they really longed for a child and did not have one.

 

 

One day, they learnt of a place in the forests in the kingdom where, if you prayed hard and well, you were granted your wish.

They went there and for many days, prayed to the goddess of the forest for a long time. Finally, their prayers were heard and the goddess appeared before them in a flash of green light.

 

 

‘What do you wish for, my dear children?’ she asked.

The king and queen, overjoyed, bowed low and said, ‘We wish to have a child.’

‘So be it, you will soon have a little girl,’ said the goddess, shimmering in the greenery. ‘But remember, though she will be a loving child, she will have one flaw: She will love new clothes too much and it will make life difficult for you. Do you still want such a child?’

 

How the Onion Got its Layers || Sudha Murty

 

 

The king and queen looked at each other with their eyes full of hope and love. ‘Yes, we do,’ they said to the goddess. ‘We can’t think of anything else we want more in this world.’

The goddess smiled and vanished back among the trees.

 

 

 

 

**

 

What will happen now? Will the king and queen be happy? And how will this lead to the onion’s many layers?

Your favourite storyteller, Sudha Murty, is back to tell you all this and more!

Story of a friendship

Posted on by swara

Nandita Basu’s evocative graphic novel traces the unlikely journey of a piano across the tumultuous twentieth journey from pre-war Leipzig, across the destruction of the First World War, to 1930s Chandernagore and Indian Independence. The Piano: Story Of A Friendship tells the story of a rare and indefinable friendship—one between a young musician and the medium of her creativity—of unexpected affinities, of bonds lost and regained. Read on to learn more about the actual friendship that inspired this delightful tale.

**

 

‘Meet the real Marcus Aurelius Fact and fiction always merge at a certain point, and then you begin to wonder what is real and which one is the story. Many years ago, I came across a rundown brown piano lying under a staircase in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. It was for sale. It stood with another old broken piano, which was black in colour, but my eye was caught by the more rickety one, I am not quite sure why. There was a large price tag even though the piano was quite broken. Yes, in India people sell even broken pianos for a lot of money.

 

The Piano || Nandita Basu

My negotiating skills are very poor, so I ended up emptying my bank account. I was eighteen then and the money I shelled out was everything I had earned from kind relatives who would give me money on my birthday or other occasions. Eighteen years’ worth of birthday− and gift−money, and some other money I had earned from odd jobs, went into buying this brown piano. I had no clue where I would get the money to repair it. I named my piano Marcus Aurelius. The reason was simple: I was influenced by the emperor Marcus Aurelius at the time. I would carry his book with me. So the choice of name was obvious. This brown broody piano seemed to have so many things to say, if only one knew how to speak to it. Right from the start, I felt that piano had a soul, just like you and I do. Sometimes, it seemed a bit dark but that’s probably because it had seen way too much. And that made me curious. I wanted to trace its history. The piano was made by a well−known German company called Julius Feurich (founded in 1851 in Leipzig, Germany). Pianos usually have a number embossed on the inside. Piano−makers put it in there to track down manufacturing details, especially the age of the piano. It wasn’t easy to find an address for the makers of Marcus because Leipzig had been behind the Iron Curtain for decades after World War II. In 2012, it had been sold to an Austrian piano manufacturer. Also, artisanal piano-making is rare these days, and almost all pianos are now made in factories. So to trace the Feurich-makers was a bit of work. But I finally did. I sent them an email with the embossed number and asked them if they had more details about this piano. I received a reply a few days later. I was told that the number indicated that Marcus was made around 1914. Unfortunately, there was no other information because the workshop had been bombed during World War II. They ended the mail by saying they were really happy I owned such a classic piano that still played, because it had a really fine sound. As bizarre as it may sound, musical instruments also need to be broken in, much like riding a horse. You might think playing a piano is just pressing notes so that you hear the sounds. It’s not exactly like that. For a pianist to get the right sound, there is a transfer of energy that happens between the player and the piano. It’s hard to explain unless you play yourself. But a lot happens between the instrument and the player. Marcus was unlike any other piano I had played. With Marcus, I was faced with rejection and disappointment. It was like Marcus didn’t want me to play it. Or maybe Marcus didn’t want to sing anymore. Whatever it was, for the first few years—yes, years!—I could never create the right sound on that piano. It was as if the more I tried to talk to Marcus, the more Marcus rejected me. And then one day, I am not sure why, I was playing a sonata by Mozart and like magic, the sound I had been struggling to find just burst out. Marcus had finally spoken. That was Marcus’s first hello to me, the start of our friendship. I still have Marcus, and Marcus needs another round of repairs soon, which is going to blow a hole in my pocket. But I would have it no other way. It’s like we were meant for each other.’

***

Writing a book and where to start!

Posted on by Penguin India

After every good book she reads, ten-year-old Wisha Wozzariter gets sad. She wished she had written that book instead! She wishes, more than anything else in the world, that she were a writer! One day, she meets a Bookworm, and takes many a wild ride on the Thought Express!

Here is an excerpt from that incident from Payal Kadadia’s book, Wisha Wozzariter!

Wisha Wozzariter loved reading. She read before school and after school. She read before lunch and after lunch. She read before dinner and after dinner. She would have read all day and all night if she could.

Wisha hated bad books, but she hated one thing even more: good ones. Good books always left her feeling she could do better if she were to write a book of her own. She’d put down a good book, sighing, ‘Now that’s a book I could have written.’

On her tenth birthday, Wisha read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She hated it more than anything. There was no reason something this good should not have been written by her. She got to the last word on the last page, then sighed, ‘Now that’s a book I could have written!’

Wisha Wozzariter||Payal Kapadia

‘Why don’t you?’ said a green little worm, popping his head out of page no. 64.

‘Who are you?’ asked Wisha, startled.

‘Why, a Bookworm, who else?’ said the worm, sounding surprised. ‘I’ve heard you say the same thing after every good book. So why don’t you?’

‘Why don’t I—what?’ said Wisha.

‘Write a book, write a book,’ said the Bookworm in a sing-song voice, wriggling his way out on to the cover.

‘I wish I was a writer,’ sighed Wisha.

‘Well, you are Wisha Wozzariter,’ said the Bookworm.

‘So I am! But I don’t quite know where to begin.’

‘At the beginning, of course,’ said the Bookworm, rolling his eyes. ‘Got some time?’

‘Yee-es. Why, what do you suggest?’ asked Wisha.

‘A trip to the Marketplace of Ideas,’ said the Bookworm. ‘My treat.’

Wisha jumped up. ‘Sounds more exciting than wishing all day! How do we get there?’

‘Close your eyes and hold my hand tight,’ said the Bookworm. ‘We’re catching the Thought Express.’

‘When does it come in?’ asked Wisha.
‘Don’t know. Are your thoughts always on time?’ ‘Not really.’
‘Well, then, we might have a little wait ahead of

us,’ said the Bookworm. ‘It would help if you were to say your name to yourself a few times.’

So Wisha closed her eyes and said, ‘Wisha Wozzariter, Wisha Wozzariter, Wisha Wozzariter.’

The Thought Express was a little slow and a little late, but it came in, sure enough. And when it left for the Marketplace of Ideas, Wisha and the Bookworm were on it.

How do the two get along, and what adventures do they find themselves on? Read more about the book here to find out!

Meet Prem, an eleven-year old Torchbearer with an imagination!

Posted on by Penguin India

Like any bored eleven-year-old with an imagination, Prem makes fantastic wishes. So when his father drags him to a monsoon-lashed Mumbai, Prem know it’s futile to dream of home. Instead, he wishes for a genie, a dragon and some superpowers. What he certainly doesn’t wish for is a quest to save some gods who are at the brink of extinction.

He finds that the gods’ last hope lies in the hands of those who channel the mysterious power of the Vedas. Caught in a cosmic crossfire, with a talking fish, some inventive monkeys and a few unexpected allies, Prem learns of his true identity-as a Torchbearer.

Here is an excerpt from this lovely book by A.B. Majmudar that talks about how Prem finds himself in Mumbai and all the wishes he makes.

Like any eleven-year old with an imagination, Prem Tripathi made fantastic wishes, especially when he was bored. And he had been bored a lot lately. His father, a professor of ancient Indian mythology, had decided to leave his university job in America to go work at an old research institute in Mumbai. After some sightseeing and a few nights spent at a nice hotel, they had come to a dilapidated old building where Professor Tripathi could bury himself in old Sanskrit manuscripts.

The research institute must have been abandoned for years. Prem and his father had gotten into a fight as soon as they had arrived at the institute. Prem didn’t understand why he had to be there instead of enjoying a typical summer vacation under the blue skies of Midwestern United States: riding bikes, whizzing down waterpark slides, going on roller coasters and playing football with his friends in thebackyard. Instead, his father had dragged him all the way to India, and not the exotic India of The Jungle Book.

The Torchbearers||A.B. Majmudar

‘I can’t believe I’m here, about to be devoured by cockroaches,’ Prem had grumbled to himself. ‘Or geckos.’

Professor Tripathi had smiled, ignoring Prem’s frustration. ‘You know, when you were a baby, you used to coo at the geckos. Kept you entertained for hours.’ Although Prem had been born in India, his father had left with him for America after Prem’s mother had passed away. They hadn’t been back since then.

Now, a few weeks since they landed in Mumbai, Prem had finished reading all the books he had brought with him. So he spent the morning avoiding his dad, who was probably involved in either dusting or research, and soon found himself bored, leaning against the chalky gray wall surrounding the institute, watching the monsoon clouds roll in. Seeing the blue sky suddenly covered in storm clouds made him scowl. ‘Just like my life,’ he mumbled.

Prem glowered up at the sky. The air seemed to hold its breath, and even the stray dogs stopped barking for a moment. Then, with a faint flash of lightning and a distant rumble of thunder, the first raindrop fell. Big, warm drops of water splattered into the dirt, disappearing instantly. Soon the drops darkened the ground, and puddles formed in the dust on either side of the road.

‘So this is the monsoon,’ Prem said to himself as he raced to stand under a large tree. His black hair was slick in minutes despite taking cover, his shirt soaked through. With a shrug that seemed to say, ‘What’s the point?’ Prem stepped out from under the tree. He cupped his hands and let the rainwater fill his hands. He released the water with a satisfying splat onto the soaked ground. He did it again. With every handful of water, he made a wish. Wish, splash. Wish, splash. At first, he wished it would stop being so hot. But then, he figured, why not wish big?

So, Prem wished for a letter by owl post, ideally from Hogwarts, but any decent wizarding school would do. Wish, splash. He wished for a tollbooth to take him to lands beyond. Wish, splash. Rabbit hole, splash. Genie, splash. Dragon, splash. Hot-air balloon, splash. Superpowers, splash. Anything that would break the string of boring days, splash. Anything that would lead to adventure, splash. The one thing that Prem was sure he hadn’t wished for was a tiny talking fish. But, of course, that’s exactly what he got.

He had just collected yet another handful of water when a tiny fish dropped into his hands. Wish, splash, fish.

It called out to Prem in a tiny voice, ‘Don’t drop me!’

Prem looked closely at his hands, stilled in a cup. He saw a golden fish, smaller than his fingernail, floating in his hand. He peered at the fish. It was shimmering, despite the cloudy skies, like a flame.

Who is this talking fish and what adventures will Prem find himself in after this moment? Get a copy of The Torchbearers to find out!

Veena’s disastrous ‘new ideas’ and why you must always refuse!

Posted on by Penguin India

In Asha Nehamiah’s book, Trouble with Magic, Veena is full of bright ideas. She gets Aunt Malu to use her herbal magic to make something new and wonderful. But magic has its own rules, and soon Veena and her aunt are in big trouble!

Here is an excerpt that tells us why Aunt Malu is reluctant to try Veena’s new idea.

Aunt Malu should have refused to try out Veena’s new idea. Trying out her nine-year-old niece’s ideas always landed Aunt Malu in trouble.

Once, Veena suggested they get free season tickets to the circus. Aunt Malu agreed happily. When they
got there, Aunt Malu found that the free tickets were their payment for helping the lion tamer clean the lion cages.

With four lions inside them!

Another time, Veena had got her to try the Adopt-a-Pet plan. This was a wonderful plan that found homes for wounded animals. Aunt Malu couldn’t decide which of the pets she adopted gave her more trouble: the mynah with the broken wing, or the lame mongoose.

The mynah could copy the sounds of a telephone ringing, the doorbell buzzing and the pressure cooker whistling. So Aunt Malu kept rushing from kitchen to front door to telephone till she got so tired that she could barely stand.

And the mongoose wouldn’t stop stealing food from their neighbour’s kitchen.

The worst was the time Aunt Malu had agreed to make a pair of grass-cutting roller skates as a gift for Veena’s father, Mr Seshadri.

He was Aunt Malu’s older brother. He loved gardening and was very proud of his lawn. It was  the best lawn in the neighbourhood.

Veena had come up with the idea of fixing sharp blades on to a pair of skates. This meant that a person would be able to cut grass just by skating over it. It was an absolutely brilliant idea—if it worked.

There was great excitement when the gift was put together and wrapped. But the skates were a total failure!

To begin with, Mr Seshadri found it impossible to skate on the grass. He tripped and fell so many times that he was soon covered with cuts. He stopped trying to skate when he hit his forehead and was left with a bump which became the colour and size of one of his prize-winning brinjals!

When Veena tried them on, she found that she could manage to skate over the grass. But instead of cutting the grass, the skates pulled out huge bunches of it. This left big bald patches on Mr  Seshadri’s beautiful lawn. Mr Seshadri was not pleased.

That’s why Aunt Malu should have been more careful when Veena entered her workroom one morning and said, ‘I have an idea!’

Get a copy of Trouble with Magic to know if Aunt Malu made a mistake, and what Veena’s idea was!

We’ve been grounded for a peculiar crime

Posted on by Penguin India

Sinister aliens are on the loose in Archit Taneja’s book, The Case of the Careless Aliens! Money is appearing mysteriously in unexpected places around the city. UFOs have been spotted in the sky. If aliens are trying to take over, they have been very careless indeed!

In this excerpt, we meet the SUPERLATIVE SUPERSLEUTHS, one of whom – unfortunately, at present, is grounded. But why?!

It’s been chilly and windy this weekend. That’s perfect weather to stay home, eat ice cream and popcorn, and laugh at crime shows on TV.

My plans went bust when Aarti called on Saturday afternoon. She said she’d been grounded and needed moral support. She pleaded on the phone for what seemed like a century in plead years.

‘You get grounded all the time! You’ve never whined about it before!’

‘I’ve been grounded for two weeks,’ she muttered in a cold voice.

Getting grounded for that long is unheard of. One would need to commit an unspeakable crime. It was especially hard to believe, since Aarti’s parents were super anti-punishment and all that sort of stuff.

‘What did you do, exactly?’

‘Er … I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter, anyway,’ Aarti mumbled. She was barely audible now.

‘Are you really grounded? Friends aren’t allowed to visit when you’re grounded, right?’

She hung up.

That made me curious enough to want to go over. She was either making all this up to lure me to visit or she’d actually done something really crazy this time. Perhaps she was too embarrassed to talk about it. In either case, it sounded like fun!

I packed my bag with stuff for the weekend. I picked up a case file I had prepared a few months ago. It contained notes on the peculiarities of Aarti’s room. I slipped in a few empty sheets, just in case there was some sleuthing to do.

Aarti’s dad opened the door; he gave a half- hearted smile and asked me to come in. He returned to the dining table and sat opposite Aarti’s mum. They resumed what sounded like a serious conversation. I am used to getting a warm hug from both of them whenever I visit. The radio was playing old boring music instead of the regular upbeat stuff.

I wondered if something bad had happened. Maybe someone they knew got into an accident or something. But why would Aarti be grounded for that? I really doubt that she nicked the car and ran over someone; she’s never been fond of the idea of driving.

Aarti’s grandparents were over. They were there quite often since they lived in the apartment right across

from Aarti’s. Grandma was watching a documentary on TV. She hates those and shrugs whenever I am anywhere close to the TV remote because she knows I’m into anything that involves learning.

It all seemed very unusual.

Aarti’s mum asked me to make sure that she didn’t have too much fun and that I talk to her about being a good child. Grandma nodded in approval. Of all people, they chose me to put sense in her head. Aarti’s really done for this time. I’m so excited!

‘Your family is acting weird,’ I said.

Aarti sat calmly on her bed. Her room was scattered with newspapers. She separated the pages containing comics and puzzles from each day’s paper, and threw away the rest.

‘Tell me. Why are you grounded?’

Why do you think Aarti is grounded? Get a copy of The Case of the Careless Aliens to find out!

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