This is a book inspired by the sight of birds riding on the backs of large animals, for the fun of it or to pick out insects and other critters from the folds and crevices and in between the hairs of these animals, thus filling their own stomachs and picking the big creatures clean. In the story, Lakshmi the calf and her mates Ramu and Kasturi await the arrival of birds from the Cow-Bird Matching Centre to perform precisely the tasks mentioned above. 

Once the birds arrive, the spotlight shifts to Lakshmi’s relationship with ​‘her’ bird – a cattle egret named Leela – which simply doesn’t take off. Instead, Leela is replaced by one L‑named cattle egret after another, but all in vain. Even the folks at the matching centre find themselves at their wit’s end until finally, with a fluttering whoosh, Lalita the mynah lands on Lakshmi’s back. When Lakshmi realises that Lalita is a friendly type, she is thrilled. At last, cow and bird match and all’s well that ends well.

This then is the gist of the story of this colourful picture book dominated by bright yellow and mithai pink, with splashes of purple. The problem, though, is that the story does not grow substantially beyond the gist. There is no dramatic moment that grabs your attention, alters the direction of the story or engages your emotions.

Does the story amuse? Does it pique the reader’s curiosity? Is it heartwarming? Is it imbued with a sense of adventure? Is it a paean to friendship? The answer to all of these is ​‘not really’. There is curiosity regarding this business of all the birds from the matching centre arriving together at a particular time, and perplexing curiosity about why only Lakshmi’s cattle egrets are taciturn. If Lakshmi is a chatterbox, what about Ramu and Kasturi? How do they get on with their bird pals? There’s disappointment rather than a sense of adventure to discover that Lakshmi’s problem is that her bird pal won’t engage in chitchat. Are cattle egrets grumpy by nature? Leela could be a one-off silent type, but what of Lekha, Lata, Lopa… and all the other L‑named cattle egrets? This casts a shadow upon cattle egrets as a whole, especially since the last L who matches with Lakshmi is a mynah.

The friendship theme is a bit of a long shot and the effort made to name names seems pointless. The story is neither substantial nor airy-fairy, and in case it does manage to evoke the image of the inextricable relationship between birds and big animals, it takes a really swampy route to it. Maybe all this is just nitpicking, but can that be helped when half the story involves nitpicking birds, literally? 

A word about colours and images. While yellow happens to be my favourite colour, particularly the yellow of Lakshmi’s Little Bird, the use of this colour along with bright pink and purple recalls the experience, some years ago, of a publisher who sold rights to a book in the western world. The original book, published in India, had warm colours such as mango yellow and terracotta. However, the western publisher insisted these be changed to bright yellows and pinks, which suited the western cultural context better! One wonders if this was the intention behind the choice of colours in this book as well.

While the pictures themselves are charming, the eye cries out for some pages of quiet and space. There’s just too much clutter in most of the pages. In fact, even the cover has somewhat of a dizzying effect. What do you focus on? Where’s the title going? It almost seems as though the design has been plotted for greater effect than the text. Perhaps toning up the text and toning down the design would have been a good option?

In the end, it’s all subjective of course. One person’s favourite is another’s tenth-best. So, in that spirit, while Lakshmi’s Little Bird springs from a warm image and lands on a neat idea, it fails to soar to great heights.

About the reviewer:

Sandhya Rao loves to read and write. She lives in Chennai and believes that speaking many languages and sharing food brings people together.