Bhajju Shyam, Gita Wolf & Andrea Anastasio

One day, Musa sets off alone to collect wood from the forest near to his home. Suddenly, he hears a deafening noise and is overcome with terror… Was the sound a wild boar? A whole herd of wild boars? Or something even worse?

What happens to Musa and how he learns to deal with his fear is explored in this powerful yet sensitive visual story of the psychology of fear. Typography, book design, narrative, and contemporary Indian tribal artwork by renowned Gond artist Bhajju Shyam come together in this new children’s book.

Gond tribal artist Bhajju Shyam is from Madhya Pradesh in central India. The Gonds are a community of highly visual people, who were traditionally forest dwellers, and the inspiration for this story came from Bhajju’s stories of his own childhood.

For ages 4 and up

Artist & Author: Tejubehan
Pages: 32pp; Size: 240 x 360m; Hardcover: Screen-printed

‘Take me to the city,’ the young girl whispers to the train, as it passes her dusty village.

Her name is Teju. She is now a middle aged woman, and in this book, she has narrated her incredible journey from endemic poverty into the rich inner world of art, in her self-taught style of lines and dots.

Page after page of sumptuous art is witness to a woman’s life, caught between endemic poverty and a rich imaginative inner world. Drawing from the City reflects upon hardship while also celebrating the remarkable story of a spirited woman.

Drawing from the City is silkscreen printed by hand, and hand-bound.

You can read more about the story behind this book here.

'Waterlife' features Mithila art, a vibrant and delicate form of folk painting from Bihar in eastern India. The artist Rambharos Jha grew up on the banks of the legendary river Ganga, and surrounded by lush fields and ponds, developed a fascination for water and water life. In this visually stunning book, artist Rambharos Jha creates an unusual artist’s journal, adapting the motifs of the Mithila style to express his own vision. He frames his art with a playful text that evokes both childhood memory and folk legend. Waterlife is silk-screen printed by hand on handmade paper, and this is the second English language edition.

"Without a shadow of exaggeration, the most beautiful book I’ve ever laid eyes on." Maria Popova, Brainpickings.org

A well-known folk poem from 17th century England, 'I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail' is a form of trick verse. The poem at first seems nonsensical, but given a break in the middle of each line begins to make perfect sense. In this pioneering visual exploration of I Saw a Peacock, Gond tribal artist Ramsingh Urveti and book designer Jonathan Yamakami use art and design in the service of language. Working together, revealing and concealing, they brilliantly mirror the shifting ways in which poetry creates meaning.

Sita’s Ramayana shifts the point of view of the Ramayana – the saga of a heroic war – to bring a woman’s perspective to this timeless epic. Narrated by the heroine Sita, it is a powerful meditation on the fate of women, as they become pawns in the wars between men and kingdoms. But Sita is not just a patient victim of events – she endures her fate with fortitude, until the moment she decides to challenge it. The book unites two women from very different backgrounds: young urban writer Samhita Arni collaborates with Patua scroll artist Moyna Chitrakar to create this unusual graphic novel.