Reviews

The Old Animals' Forest Band by Sirish Rao

iammandyellen's review

3.0

Many things might attract an author of children's books to rewrite the Grimm's tale "The Musicians from Bremen": it's curiously modern message of animal rights, the strangely humanist movement of the animals from obsolete resources to valuable, not to mention independent, social participants, and the delightful possibilities it offers the illustrator. It might also be a particular poignant story to retell in the current atmosphere of Indian economics (both author and illustrator are Indian). But for some reason, at least in its English incarnation, Rao's storytelling is flat and lifeless in spite of Bai's extraordinary illustrations (which are, in all honesty, the most important features of the book to my two-year-olds).