My Animated Book for Children: Grandma's Eyes

There's something else special about this book, too: It's one of Tulika's Bilingual Picture Books.

India speaks many languages, and every Indian child is exposed to at least two languages. These books provide an opportunity for the young reader to learn one language through another.

Each line of text is in English and another Indian language. The book is available in:

English-Hindi

English-Tamil

English-Malayalam

English-Kannada

English-Telugu

English-Marathi

English-Gujarati

Grandma's Eyes is a warm and funny picture book for children of two years and above. The author, Sandhya Rao, meant to celebrate the special relationship each child has with its grandmother. I had about 20, because when I was a kid, not content with my real two, I used to borrow other people's grandmothers, too!

There are only twelves lines of simple text that celebrates the essence of the special relationship. When I started illustrating for this book, I did all kinds of styles and treatments, but neither the editors at Tulika Publishers nor I could achieve anything satisfactory. Children deserve the best, so we kept brainstorming.

While at it, I was struck by a bolt of memory! When I was ten, I used to tear out the sheets of my notebooks to make 'moving pictures.' I used the same idea for Grandma's Eyes, made her eyes blink happily. The editors fell in love with the idea, and I drew the book in a day!

I hope every child who's delighted with the moving grandma will try this out herself, and have written a hub on my secret method, too!

The publishers told me that many adults liked flipping and flapping the pages merrily to watch the pictures move. So it delights kids of 40, too!

GRANDMA'S EYES by Sandhya Rao

art Ashok Rajagopalan

28 pages, 5.5" x 6.5", full colour, soft cover, for 2 years and above

If you want to give pleasure to little people, making moving pictures for them, visit my hub http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Draw-Moving-Pictures It has two video tutorials.