Today’s picture book is a silly story based on an Indian folk tale chockablock full of word play.

Shruthi Rao writes books for children. She loves books, trees, hikes, benches, eating kadooboos, and hanging out with her daughter. 15 of her books for children have been published in India. She lives in California with her family.  You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Twitter/X, on BlueSky, or on Instagram.

KADOOBOO! A SILLY SOUTH INDIAN FOLKTALE is the story of forgetful Kabir.  He is visiting a friend’s house when her dad makes delicious kadooboo to share.  Kabir runs to take some home to his mom, but along the way many friends and distractions mix up the name of the delicious treat until he is utterly confused as to what the name might be.  The amount of word play in this book is just as delicious as the treat sounds and the illustrations by Darshika Varma are just as delightful.

Welcome Shruthi!

Me: Can you tell us a little bit about your writing journey?  How has that brought you to writing this picture book? 

Shruthi: I’ve always been good at writing, but I went to school to be an engineer, and then started working in a tech company. During the late 2000s, I began blogging, and gained a sizeable following. It made me realize I love writing and that I’m good at it. After my daughter was born, I quit my job to become a writer. I started off with writing short stories for grownups, and freelancing for newspapers/magazines.

I stumbled into writing for children in 2012, after which I’ve never looked back. Over the next 8-10 years, 16 of my books for children have been traditionally published in India, with several more releasing in the next few years.

Meanwhile, I moved from India to USA, and began figuring out how to get published in the US. I built up a submission package and began querying. This story, or at least a version of it, was in my submission package.

Me: What gave you the idea to write a book about the confusing name of a tasty treat based on a folktale?  What made you want to write this book?

Shruthi: I grew up with this south Indian folktale – and it always made me giggle helplessly when the protagonist said dubukku instead of kadooboo. I thought it would be great if I could take this little story (and the chuckles) to a larger audience. So, I played around with modernizing it, expanding it and making it more child friendly, and it worked! 🙂

Me: This is your American debut picture book (yay!) though you have written many other books before, published in India.  What does your writing process look like?

Shruthi: It always starts with an idea, or a phrase, or an image, or a person – hazy at first, and then it grows increasingly solid. And then I go into a frenzy of research (even for fiction, but especially for nonfiction). Some of these ideas I shelve for later. Others just grip me and don’t let me go, and these are the ones I follow to completion. Most of the times, I have multiple ideas/projects on the go, in different stages of being. Sometimes, I go back to my shelved ideas to see if their time has come.

And then write, write, edit, edit, submit, submit!

Me: What is one thing that surprised you in writing this story? 

Shruthi: When I started out with this story, I thought I’d just change the ending to make it more child-friendly and make the protagonist a child, instead of an adult as in the original. But the more I sat with it, the more it expanded. It became funnier. A refrain appeared. The voice became lighter. My editor’s notes and suggestions led to a better resolution and a new ending. And the illustrations by Darshika Varma just brought in an entirely new dimension.

It happened gradually, so the change wasn’t so apparent to me. But the other day, I looked at my very first draft that I wrote years and years ago, and my eyes popped right out of my head to see how far that little story had come.

Me: I love that you have a character who struggles with the name of this delicious snack.  I laughed out loud at the climactic word play.  It was so fun to read out loud.  Were there certain sounds you stuck to as you played with each transformation of the food’s name?  Did the story undergo a lot of revisions because of the word play?

Shruthi: So glad to hear it made you laugh! Yes, I had a long list of words with all the permutations and combinations that one can get from D-B-K. I thought of corresponding situations/events that would make each mixed-up word make “sense”. Since I’m trilingual, I kept coming up with situations that would work in the other languages I know, but not in English. So I had to go back and start all over again. So yeah, there was a lot of playing around.

Me: The illustrations by Darshika Varma are perfect.  The colors are SO vibrant and the characters so energetic.  Were there any illustration surprises for you?

Shruthi: Darshika’s illustrations are stunning! And yes, she surprised me many times over. The biggest surprise was that she set the final pages in a house with an open courtyard in the center. I’ve been in several traditional South Indian houses like this one, but never imagined it in this story. But guess what – it worked perfectly for the situation in the story.

Darshika also set the story in India of the 1990s, and put in little details that I love – like the box in which the kadooboo were carried. We called such boxes casseroles and many urban homes had one. It was right out of my childhood. It made me so happy.

Also, she portrayed Anya with vitiligo, which I loved because of how rare this representation is in children’s lit. This kind of casual representation is what I advocate for all the time.

Me: Any advice for other picture book writers?

Shruthi:

• Read loads of picture books
• Critique manuscripts and get yours critiqued
• Listen in/observe other people’s critiques of other people’s manuscripts
• Dissect and deconstruct published picture books with a group, and discuss what works and what doesn’t work and why

Thanks for having me! 😊

You’re welcome Shruthi!  Thank you for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, if you haven’t had a chance yet to check out this book, it was released in February.  The hilarious word play along Kabir’s journey really drives this story and reminds me of classic word play writers like Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss.  However, this isn’t the only thing to love about this story, there are wonderful illustrations and back matter that enrich this tale quite a bit.  You won’t want to miss this one.