Three -year-old Kabir loves new books. "We have a bedtime ritual where he gets to pick three books to read before he sleeps," reveals his mother Deepti Bansal, a marketing professional. These days, his favourites are books featuring animals, and by now, he can identify most of them. "As I read a story, he likes to look for things he can point out," she tells us. When he saw 1-2-3 Idlis in a Sambar Sea (AdiDev Press), a seek-and-find book written by Ashwitha Jayakumar and illustrated by Tanya Sharma, he was amused by the title and thrilled to check it out.
The book introduces pre-schoolers to numbers through famous dishes from various cities across India. For instance, the first one shows a vendor from Varanasi making a jalebi at a ghat; the second depicts two bowls of biryani being sold on the streets of Hyderabad. The sixth is a special delight for Mumbai readers with six cones of Bhelpuri, and the seventh shows seven idlis from Chennai. "Kabir loves snacks. For the longest time, we didn't give him sweets, but he's now discovered sugar and he loves it. He enjoys laddoos, and jalebi is one of his favourites," shares Bansal, mentioning how little Kabir was instantly drawn to the vibrant orange illustration of the syrupy dessert on the first page.