To Market! to Market!

“Ravishankar’s pacing is flawless, her rhymes contagious . . . readers and listeners are likely to demand repeated readings, and will discover additional delightful layers of meaning each time.”—Children’s Literature

“Ravishankar’s quirky, rhythmic verse becomes a graphic, narrative force in itself, physically wrapping itself around images, becoming characters, taking falls, and generally slithering and dithering or thumping and bumping along.”—Michael Heyman, The Horn Book Magazine

“Anushka Ravishankar is India’s answer to Dr. Seuss.”—Madeline Travis, Booktrust

In To Market, To Market, a little girl sets off to the market with some money in her pocket—and no idea what to buy . . .

Featuring vibrant paintings by award-winning Italian artist Emanuele Scanziani, this exuberant pictorial tribute to the wonders of the Indian market by well-known children’s poet Anushka Ravishankar suggests that the real fun may not be in the buying, after all. Longtime collaborator Rathna Ramanathan’s innovative typography creates a unique cohesion between the verse and artwork of each scene—every ele-ment on the page adds to the world of the story.

A mathematics graduate turned children’s book writer, Anushka Ravishankar has made an international name for herself with eleven books of nonsense verse. She emerged as the sub-continental pioneer of the genre with her effortless and fizz-gibbinous adaptations of this difficult form to the cadences of Indian English, and has been duly dubbed “India’s Dr. Seuss.” Her books have been translated into seven languages and have earned twelve awards and counting.

Carrying on in the nonsense-verse tradition of Dr. Seuss, Edward Lear and Lewis Caroll, the witty and jubilant poetry-tales of Indian writer Anushka Ravishankar are internationally acclaimed, widely translated, and honoured with innumerable awards. Anushka has authored over 18 books. Originally from Italy, Scanziani is an artist and freelance illustrator who lives and works from Auroville, an international commune in South India. He first worked with Tara Publishing by producing the stunning line drawings for The Legend of the Fish, and also illustrated the acclaimed To Market! To Market! and A Wild Elephant at Camp. Rathna Ramanathan has steered the design philosophy of Tara since the very beginning, working on over twenty titles, as well as creating distinctive catalogs and exhibitions. In the process, she can be said to have pioneered innovative children's book design in India.