Ganesha's Sweet Tooth
With bright, elaborately detailed illustrations, this picture book tells a fictionalized story based on the legend of how the Hindu god Ganesha transcribed the epic poem Mahabharata. Here Ganesha is “just like any other kid” except that he has an elephant’s head, and vividly colored pictures show him cruising around on a magical mouse. He loves sweets (he is a bit “chubby”), but when he bites down on “the super jumbo jawbreaker laddoo,” his tusk breaks off. He is furious and bitterly ashamed until he meets Vyasa the poet, who needs the tusk to write his poem, which is so long that “all the pens in the world would break before it is done.” So Ganesha helps the poet and uses his tusk to write the 100,000 verses of a story, which turns out to be so beautiful he even forgets about sweets. Blending computer graphics with traditional images, the intricate, stylized illustrations may be best suited for grade-schoolers, who will enjoy the story’s turnarounds and focus on luscious sweets, and many will be ready for the classic Hindu myth. Grades 1-3. --Hazel Rochman