Post by Mark T. Locker.
Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth by Emily Haynes. Illustrated by Sanjay Patel.
My boy has a great uncle who loves to shower him with wonderful and educational toys. That can be interpreted as a bad thing but all it means is nothing commercial and lots of beautifully handmade stuff and occasional books. This book came from a museum! It’s super extra fancy already, you can tell. In fact, the Rubin Museum of Art is mere steps from our very own Charles P. Rogers showroom!
Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth is an adorable and amusing retelling of an ancient Indian story; the writing of the epic Hindu poem, Mahabharata. According to legend, Ganesha, elephant-headed god of the Hindu pantheon, uses his tusk as a pen to transcribe the story as the poet Vyasa dictates. The version in this book varies the story a bit. In this version, young god Ganesha loves the candy laddoo. He can’t get enough laddoo. When he tries to bite into a super jumbo jawbreaker laddoo, one of his tusks breaks off!
Needless to say, Ganesha is quite upset, until Vyasa calls out to him and offers him a great new use for his broken tusk. And that’s how the Mahabharata was written!
The illustrations for this book are wonderfully bright, geometric, and colorful. I have heard them compared to Charlie Harper’s awesome illustrations, which is high praise indeed. This is a great book to introduce kids to Hindu religion and the Mahabharata or, if you already know about it, it’s a fun way to revisit it.