Review of at The Seaside

Review of At the Seaside

Even the nastiest of critics would think twice before being harsh to a book that has a storyline, colour illustrations, is printed on paper through which one cannot see the sun even at midday, and is also priced at a surprisingly affordable Rs 25. At the Seaside written by Swapna Dutta and illustrated by Amitava Sengupta looks like an interesting book but falls short of almost every aspect of our idea of a presentable book. Peppered with tidbits of information about jellyfish, salt from the sea, the activity of fishermen, dangers at sea, and more, the story is narrated by a young girl whose name however remains a secret even in the days of heightened awareness about the rights of the girl child. Inspite of the colour, the illustrations look stale: even the breeze blowing from the sea fails to add life or movement. The fonts used are innovative, but if we look from the perspective of child readers, fonts like these usually make for difficult reading. The arrangement of text in the book is extremely haphazard and defies all theories of page-setting as it keeps alternating between centre aligned, right aligned, text wrap, left aligned and so on. The storyline is extremely arbitrary with random dialogues, events and information being thrown in. Finally, the book fails to make the young reader want to visit the seaside. 

To readers who have been reading books from Pratham for years, this book does come across as a shock. However, given the fact that Pratham Books has published wonderful books in the recent past, and has all the resources at its disposal, we could surely expect it to come up with better books in future.

At the Seaside, Author: Swapna Dutta, Illustrator: Amitava Sengupta, Pratham Books, Bangalore, 2010, ISBN – 81-8263-405-9, Pages – 16, Rs 25.