GANGTOK, 08 May: A children's picture book set in our very own Sikkim has made a quiet debut. Until now.
Published by Scholastic, 'Miss Lee and the Mosquito' is a finely-nuanced collaboration between two hugely talented women, writer Maria L. Denjongpa and illustrator Anna Vojtech.
Ms. Denjongpa describes herself, rather intriguingly, as 'an English teacher, writer and maker of paper mache masks'. What she does not mention is that as one of the founding members of Taktse International School and currently the Acting Principal there, her deep commitment to giving our children an alternative education where learning is fun has been creating quite a positive buzz in the field of education in Sikkim, much like her mosquito does in her book.
Award-winning illustrator, Ms. Vojtech has, with her usual finesse, captured Sikkim's landscape and ethos in deft brushstrokes, and provided the perfect launch-pad for this little symphony of a story. Her fine attention to detail thus peppers the pages of the book with a wonderfully detailed Buddhist shrine room, as well as monasteries, chortens and tharchoks, scenes so ubiquitous to the Sikkim landscape. Why, she has even worked in a Nepali daily into the book!
With its alliterative prose and very simple storyline, that of Miss Lee who visits her friend in Sikkim and then spends most of her night engaged in a vain tussle with a wickedly persistent- or should that be a persistently wicked, or both epithets? - mosquito, this book will surely find resonance with children, and I daresay, adults worldwide.
My boys were rather awed that a story written by their Acting Principal should have come out in print, from the Scholastic stable at that; the book is definitely another feather in Taktse’s cap. Congratulations, Ms. Denjongpa! The best part of the book for me was, hands down, spotting Ms. Denjongpa herself cleverly woven into the very first page of the book by Ms. Vojtech!
The book is priced at Rs. 175 and is available from Scholastic (www.scholastic.co.in)
