The Joy of Picture Books

For too long, the Indian children's shelf was dominated by imported titles. Many of them were lovely books, but few showed an Indian child their own street or their own grandmother. That has changed, and Indian picture-book publishing now offers far more choice. Here are ten favourites our editors return to again and again.

1. Gajapati Kulapati. Ashok Rajagopalan's sneezing elephant is pure read-aloud joy for the very young and a modern classic.

2. Tiger on a Tree. Anushka Ravishankar's spare, rhythmic nonsense verse, with Pulak Biswas's striking art, helped reinvent the Indian picture book.

3. Ammachi's Amazing Machines. Rajiv Eipe smuggles real science into a warm kitchen, one coconut barfi at a time.

4. Chuskit Goes to School. Chuskit, a girl in Ladakh who uses a wheelchair, dreams of going to school. It is a tender, important story about inclusion.

5. Ekki Dokki. A much-loved Marathi folktale about two sisters and a magical pond, retold with warmth by Sandhya Rao.

6. The Blue Umbrella. Ruskin Bond's slender Himalayan tale of longing and generosity is a little older, and worth every page.

7. Same-Same and other bilingual titles. These books honour the two or three languages most Indian children grow up speaking.

8. Books by young authors. They include several from our own list and show that children are storytellers as well as readers.

9. Folktale retellings. They run from the Panchatantra to regional oral traditions, freshly illustrated for a new generation.

10. Your own child's book. This is the one you write together, in your own language, about your own world. It may become their most treasured of all.

Our full verdicts on many of these are in the Book Reviews section, and we keep adding reviews. Browse them, then build a shelf your child can see themselves in.