Zai Whitaker grew up in Mumbai, in a family of naturalists. She has written novels, stories and poems for children – including Andamans Boy, Kali and the Rat Snake and Kanna Panna, published by Tulika. She now lives and works at the Madras Crocodile Bank, near Chennai, which she helped ‘Snake Man’ Rom Whitaker set up almost 40 years ago.
Words rollick and frolic in Kanna's head, yet he hardly speaks. One day, he is with his family at the cave temples when the lights go off. Everyone is frightened, except Kanna. Light or no light, it makes no difference because he can't see anyway. And as he confidently leads the way out, he finds himself talking… Words tumble out to unleash the playful...
Kali hates school. And school hates him, he thinks, for he has no friends. His classmates find him strange. He wishes his father were an ‘ordinary' bus-conductor or postman instead of a snake-catcher, even if one of the most celebrated in the Irula tribe. He worries that others will see him eating fried termites (his favourite snack!) and laugh. And then...
Zai’s uncle is the famous 'birdman of India' Salim Ali, everyone in her family is a birding expert, and she herself can’t so much as identify the pipit sitting right under her nose. In this delightful portrait of childhood, Zai Whitaker recounts her early birding woes and how she winged it. Prabha Mallya’s pictures pick up the humour, and are an arresting...
Tired of life in Mumbai with his Chacha and Chachi, Arif runs away. He hops onto a train to Chennai, then smuggles himself onto a boat going to… the Andaman islands! Rich with adventure and humour, full of the wonders of nature, this book is also filled with details about the unique, misunderstood world of the Jarawa, a tribe in the Andamans whose very...
Gundu and Keeri Humongoose are normal mongooses. They are hasty, they chatter with chirps or clicks, they eat rats… But then they do something that Do-First-Think-Later animals do not. They take a decision! To move out of the jungle! And so begins their adventure into the unknown… filled with danger from two-legged creatures. Funny and quirky, the story...
