Time to make good on your promise to expose the children to different belief systems? Make sure to include "The Little Book Of Hindu Deities" in your arsenal. Pixar animator Sanjay Patel's book is a bright, clever, and completely child-friendly introduction to some of the more prominent of the Hindu gods and their avatars. Each god's story is told simply, with humor, and with care to include some of the more well-known and important events in their histories.
Patel's book was originally self-published as "Little India", but upon recognizing that it implied incorrectly that to be Indian means to be Hindu, he chose to change the title upon the book's publication by Plume/Penguin. "I do hope to highlight a wider spectrum of India's culture in the future", notes Patel, who was born in England and raised in Los Angeles, and has never actually been to India.
The artwork in "Little Book" is stunning, and Patel makes it available as art prints and on child-sized teeshirts (a two-year-old sporting a shirt with the goddess of destruction? Classic!).
