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Have you ever seen a tree?
D-uh! Of course!
What is a tree then?
A tall, thick, woody plant.
Right answer, if you want to get technical about it.
But this book is not about getting technical.
It’s about smelling, feeling, hearing, and really, really looking at trees. It’s about looking down (to spot fallen tree bounty), and looking up (to spot canopy patterns against the sky). It’s about leaves and flowers and seeds and fruits and roots and shoots. It’s about find-outing and walk-around-ing, write downing and I-wonder-why-ing. But it is ultimately about arriving, by yourself, at the non-technical answer to the question ‘What is a tree?’, which will only be revealed to you when you learn to see a tree as you truly should—not with your eyes but with your heart.
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Roopa Pai is one of India’s best-known writers for children. This computer engineer-turned-author has written over 30 books, ranging from picture books to chapter books and fiction to non-fiction, on themes as varied as sci-fi fantasy, popular science, maths, history, economics, Indian philosophy, life skills, medicine and memoir. Many of her books are bestsellers and are enjoyed as much by adults as by children.
Her best-known books include the eight-part Taranauts, India’s first fantasy-adventure series for children in English, Ready! 99: Must-Have Skills for The World Conquering Teenager (And Almost-Teenager) , the award-winning national bestseller The Gita For Children, listed by Amazon India as one of ‘100 Indian Books t o Read in a Lifetime’, and its prequel The Vedas and Upanishads For Children. Her most recent book is The Yoga Sutras for Children.
Roopa is also a popular speaker—she has spoken at a variety of corporate forums, premier literary events like the Jaipur Literature Festival, international cultural organizations like the Asia Society in New York (at the invitation of the Consul General of India), and international Gita conferences. Her TEDx talk ‘Decoding. She runs short courses online, on the Gita and other ancient Indian texts, for children and adults both in India and North America.
Among her books for adults are Indian fitness evangelist and supermodel Milind Soman’s award-winning memoir, Made In India, and Cubbon Park: The Green Heart of Bengaluru, the first-ever history of her city’s iconic 152-year-old park. She writes a fortnightly column on Bangalore for the Hindustan Times, and has also translated 100 poems of the celebrated Kannada poet, Padma Shri K.S. Nissar Ahmed, into English.
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