How a Young Crow Came to Love a Sunbird, a Green Parrot, an Old Woman, and Balls of Rice

4.6/5 - (5 votes)

Author: Michael Chacko DanielsA sample cover of the book: black handloom sari with gold embossed nameplate and lettering for the title and author's name. The border of the sari lines the right hand margin of the cover.
Illustrator: Adrija Ghosh
Pages: 154
Year of Publication: 2022
Price: Rs 500 / $25
ISBN:
978-81-956648-0-1 (9788195664801)

About the Author
Michael Chacko Daniels lives and writes in San Francisco. He grew up in Bombay, where he attended St. Michael’s High School, Wilson College, and University of Bombay’s Department of Economics. He holds a Master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. His parents grew up in an ancient Syrian Christian community in the south Indian state of Kerala. In their middle years, in Bombay, they joined the local Baptist Church out of conviction. His adventures in the United States include five years as a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA); four as editor/publisher of the New River Free Press of Grand Rapids, Michigan; four as assistant editor in San Francisco at The Asia Foundation; and sixteen at Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living. He helped start the Jobs for Homeless Consortium of Alameda County (California) in 1988, and to run it through mid-2004. He is a naturalized citizen of the United States. He has been writing for over five decades and this is the eleventh book he has published with Writers Workshop, India.

About the Illustrator
Adrija Ghosh is an illustrator from Kolkata currently based out of Bengaluru. She combines her love for literature and fine art to create whimsical illustrations for children’s books and other illustrated media. She has published about ten books for children with various Indian publishers. Over the years she has worked with the likes of Google, The Caravan Magazine, Firstpost, Karadi Tales, Pratham Books, and Hachette India.

About the Book
In his foreword to the book, Deepak Dalal writes:

“Although Michael Chacko Daniels has lived and written for over five decades in the US, presently in San Francisco – a city at the cutting edge of technology – this little fable shows that his heart still lingers in his beloved India, where he grew up.

The story starts off about a change to vegetarianism and how a member of the Indian Christian community, who loves meat and everything non-vegetarian, must bid farewell to his meat-eating days. But the inner story within the outer story develops into what reads like an Indian folktale. The central characters – the crows, the parrot and sunbird, the people and their offerings made to inanimate deities, and the transcendent transfiguration at the end – evoke the very essence of India.

Adrija Ghosh’s illustrations are of a uniformly high quality, the most appealing of which are her depictions of crows, evocatively conveying the bird’s cunning and resourcefulness. Her work is a perfect accompaniment complementing Daniels’s narrative.”