In the children’s book SUNDRI AND MUNDRI’S LOHRI ADVENTURE, author Reenita M. Hora tells of Lohri: a winter festival celebrated in Punjab. One day, Sundri and Mundri are given a magic blanket by their aunt and transported from their Californian home to a village in rural India several centuries in the past. Villagers ask for and receive the kids’ wisdom from “the modern world,” and they soon find themselves being described as “the Smart Sisters.”

A local ruler becomes jealous of their abilities, and, seeing them as a threat, has them locked up. Sundri and Mundri then invoke the name of Dulla Bhatti, a folk hero associated with the Lohri festival. Like Robin Hood, Dulla Bhatti robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Also like Robin Hood, his actual origins are shrouded in mystery; all of what is known about his life in sixteenth-century India is culled from later sources. Yet his reputation lives on. Here he appears at the sisters’ invocation, frees them from imprisonment, and (after a couple more feats of magic and derring-do) helps them return to the present.

Younger children will be entertained, though one feels the very straightforward plot will not sustain interest above the age of eight or so. The wider purpose, which everyone who has ever been an immigrant parent will be familiar with, is to encourage understanding and appreciation of cultural practices from another culture in children who lack first-hand knowledge of those practices. Hora, one feels, has Indian-American readerships in mind, using the first-person plural in notes at the book’s conclusion—exhorting parents and caregivers to celebrate Indian customs. Moreover, a certain lack of context about Dulla Bhatti (who is only ever described as a “bandit hero,” with no explanation for what he did that made him so revered) also militates somewhat against wider audiences. But, taken on its own terms, SUNDRI AND MUNDRI’S LOHRI ADVENTURE succeeds—benefitting in particular from a set of winning illustrations by Taylor Nystrom. Nystrom has an intuitive understanding of composition, and the visuals are strikingly presented—an excellent complement to the text.

Reenita M. Hora’s SUNDRI AND MUNDRI’S LOHRI ADVENTURE is a straightforward and nicely illustrated tale about customs and tales associated with Northern India that will entertain younger readers.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader