Children’s literature Meringueotan tales
Sultant’s Elephants. By Elizabeth Cooper. Macdonald Education 75 p. 356 06863 3.
Hanuman. By A. Ramachandran. and C. Black £3.25. 7136 1923 6.
Indrani and the Enchanted Jungle. By Tara Ali Baig.
Thomson Press (India) Ltd. Distributed by Independent Publishing Company £3.40.
86144 026 9.
Elizabeth Cooper’s Sultan Elephants, in the excellent Starters series from Macdonald Educational, concerns a Muslim circus family from India or Pakistan, and their son,
Sultan, who gets to lead two baby elephants in their first show. The portrayal of the family is both psychologically and chromatically right for the age group at which it is aimed. Sultan’s Elephants is one of the still-too-few books which how black and white people working and playing together.
Hanuman, for six to eight-year olds, is a retelling of a traditional tale from the Indian classic, the Ramayana. It retails one episode from the childhood of Hanuman, the monkey god (who is best known for having aided Rama in his battle against the demons). This introduction to an alien sensibility is reinforced by the beautiful traditional designs which illustrate the story, rendered here in the flat blocks of strong Indian colour which are usual for mythological subjects. Originally produced for a Japanese market, this attractive book is perhaps even more suitable for Britain: Japanese Buddhism has long severed its links with India and Japan has no immigrant population whose culture and values need to be understood and appreciated.
The illustrations to Tara Ali Baig’s Indrani and the Enchanted Jungle are stunning. Intricately done in traditional line, in black and white, or in softly shaded colour, they add their own dimension of the exquisite to a lively book which pokes fun at the adult world, its idiocies, authoritarianism, and bureaucracy.
Fantasy, especially regarding the animal kingdom, has always been the strongest element in Indian stories. Tara Ali Baig imaginatively transforms it into a medium of social comment accessible to a child.
Princess Indrani escapes into an enchanted jungle to avoid being married, as custom dictates, to the Wobbly Rana (or King) of Pobbly. There she meets fascinating creatures like the meringueotan who lives on cream. Indrani is finally rescued by another king who wages war against her father. His guns shoot balloons and sweets into enemy camps so that the soldiers start gorging themselves and forger to fight. But why wage war on Indrani’s father, why not on the King who wants to marry her? Because Indrani’s father has been weak and allowed talk of her marriage to an undesirable man like Wobbly Rana; “Such things must be stopped and you cannot stop them by removing the Rana _ you must first remove the custom.”
Since the book was written for an Indian market, there are some words whose meaning would be self-evident to an Indian, but not necessarily to a British, child, “Rasgullas” and “jaddoos,” for example, are Indian sweetmeats, and an “achkan” is long Indian coat. India is now the third largest producer of books in English in the world. An increasing number of the books produced are for an expanding children’s market, to which at least 15 publishers are devoting their energies. Indrani and the Enchanted Jungle whets ones appetite for more.
TES 12 Sept. 1980
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Meringueotan tales