Ekki Dokki
Ekki Dokki is a pleasant tale of two sisters who are not over-rich in hair... One wonders whether this little Marathi tale was first invented by some mother long ago to persuade a small, reluctant daughter to wash her hair with shikakai!... Anyway this story has a nice moral all round – care for plants, be kind to animals and use herbal products – Tulika is doing a goo job alright. All this and a multilingual vocabulary too, into the bargain... Both books (Ekki Dokki and Eecha Poocha) are beautifully produced and printed on sturdy paper. The English, Malayalam and Kannada versions are in bold type, easy on a child's eye. The illustrations are in vivid colour... Original and delightful in a completely different style (from Eecha Poocha's), Ranjan De has created for Ekki Dokki a world out of triangles, capturing the naivety and wonder of child's art. All in all, a great buy.
– March-April 1997, Indian Review of Books

Eecha Poocha
Eecha Poocha is a wonderful tale from Kerala about a fly and cat who sat down to have rice soup together but with unexpected results... the book enables a child to learn about different aspects of Indian life along with new words. From this story I found out that 'kannhi' is rice
soup in Malalyalam and that in Kerala the jackfruit leaf is often used to drink 'kannhi' with.
– November 1996, The Book Review

Eecha Poocha brought back nostalgic memories of a story on which every successive baby in the vast extended family cut its teeth. With the death of the joint family, one wonders how many children hear it these days. Mothers of today may have to buy Eecha Poocha to amuse a three-year-old with an authentic India tale that works by incremental repetition... Ashok Rajagopalan's art work captures movement on the page, conveying humour and a sense of sheer delight.
– March-April 1997, Indian Review of Books

Have you met Eecha and Poocha? Nor had we, till we stumbled on to this cute book. And we overlooked the line on the jacket that read, ideal for 4 to 8 year-olds because we believe, like one famous bibliophile, one ought not to be done out of reading a good book just because we didn't find it when we were at the target age!
          This is a Malalyalam folktale retold. And it has been given much effort, since the author is not the translator; young people's author Sandhya Rao took it from the original language to English. There has been an earnest effort to convey the flavour of the place with adorable word birds fluttering through the ages, explanations written on their feathers. If it had not been for this sincere bunch of people, these folktales, full of native wisdom and wit, would have been lost to us with great-grandma's generation... we'll miss the ambience of grandma cracking betelnuts, drawing her grandchildren closer around her...but at least, we have these books to hand down!
– June 1999, H T School Times

Romp through this funny story and come away with a few Malayalam words in your word-bank.
– August 2000, The Deccan Herald

And Land Was Born
It's not often that one comes across an Indian children's book that does us proud on bookshelves crowded with Enid Blytons, Disney annuals and comics by the thousand. That's why it was like holding a rainbow in my hands when the creation tale of the Bhilala tribals, And Land Was Born – retold by Sandhya Rao, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy – arrived out of the blue.
          This oral tale from the lore of the Bhilalas of central India is irresistable. In brief: "In the beginning, the Bhilalas believe, there was only water. The harassed and wet subjects beg their lazy god to create land so that they can get dry and stay that way. Poor god is put to all sorts of trouble before this wish can be granted..." This bare outline does little justice to the zany element of this fantasy-rich story, with an  unusual depiction of god, recreated with wit and imagination by Sandhya Rao... 
          What reaches out to the young reader at once are the incredibly beautiful illustrations. Adapted from the original paintings done by the Bhilalas on the mud walls of their dwellings,
as captured in a documentary film, Uma Krishnaswamy's renditions through a cut-colour offset process are mind-blowing. Against the pale beige background, one marvels at the personalised jugni matas, the teeming animal universe imbued with life and, most remarkable of all, the sparkling drops of water that acquire an animation of their own!
          Whether read aloud to a tiny tot or delved into with delight by an older child, this unusual folk tale in a just-released large format hardcover, is a collector's volume.
– October 1998, The Deccan Herald

A delightful, humorous creation story from the Bhilala tribe in Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India... Accompanying this lively tale with its understated wit are primitive, stylized illustrations
in bold primary and secondary colours on a rich tan background. They are often boxed with geometric borders and arranged in a variety of pleasing layouts. Unfortunately, the outline map
of India is somewhat distorted and may be confusing to young readers. Nonetheless, it is a real treat to have this charming tale from an area not always represented in folklore collections.
– July 1999, School Library Journal, Arlington County Library, VA, USA

This particular story is told by Guna Baba, an old respected gentleman of the Bhilala tribe in Madhya Pradesh, and retold by Sandhya Rao, and is only one of the hundreds of variations on the Big Bang theory. Tulika is doing a wonderful service, bringing out stories and books away from the pixies-elves-fairies variety and towards those that explore our own folklore by drawing from tales which aren't part of the great epics or the Panchatantra.
– October 1998, Indian Review of Books

Rao's simple style of narration and structuring of sentences make reading easy and enjoyable. Uma Krishnaswamy's illustrations reflect the style of the original paintings found on the mud walls of  the huts of the Bhilalas. She has imbibed the spirit of the originals combining her creative imaging to capture the essence of the tale.
– September 1998, The Hindu

The Runaway Peppercorn
Sights, sounds, smells and colours come alive in this simply told tale.
– February 2006, The New Indian Express