DESERT GIRL, MONSOON BOY

Dairman draws inspiration from the Rabari people, an Indigenous group of nomadic herders and shepherds that live in northwest India, to showcase how two children live and thrive in the era of climate change.

Clipped couplets imagine a nomadic desert girl and a village-dwelling boy and how their lives intersect when the former’s family travels in search of water and the latter’s family seeks to escape it. Paneled pages compare and contrast the children’s experiences. “Patterned veil. / Covered hair” depicts the girl’s mother with a flowing veil and the boy’s father winding a turban on. “Trek for water. / Head to school” reveals two different journeys. Readers see how extreme weather threatens both ways of life before, at the end of the book, both children find higher ground and dance together: “Thirst quenched. / Dry and sound. // Round the fire, / songs of joy.” Bangalore-based Sreenivasan’s extensive research is evident in her saturated, detailed illustrations of families, plants, animals, and nomadic and village life. Dairman’s author’s note provides context and emphasizes that extreme dry and wet weather “will continue to put…lives…in very real danger.” Text and illustrations work beautifully in concert: Desert and monsoon scenes each have a distinctive color palette—golds, rusts, and reds; violets, greens, and blues—and variations in page composition and panel placement create necessary narrative tension.

A beautiful and important book about climate change featuring those who are most affected by it.