Book Review: DANIEL THE DRAW-ER

Title: Daniel the Draw-er

Author: SJ Henderson

Publisher: Createspace (Self-published)

Pages: 142

Daniel the Draw-er is a charming book for children that holds appeal for grownups too. Written as the first person present tense account of Daniel, the book is sure to appeal to readers.

Nine-year-old Daniel is a remarkable voice. He has just the right mix of naiveté and the ability to see through the pretense of the adults around him. He makes observations about adults, how they are supposed to be smart, but aren’t always. How they are always making pronouncements about what is or isn’t healthy for children.

Even as he speaks of big things, he remains a child, his childishness seen through the little details, the way he drinks straight from the carton and wipes his milk moustache on his sleeve.

Still childlike enough to want a superhero’s cape, he is still mature enough to fight his own battles, although from the grownup’s point of view, he can be difficult at times. Set fire to one kitchen and everyone freaks out.

Daniel has only one friend at school. Annie.  Even as his mother pesters him to make new friends, he insists that Annie is the only friend he needs. Annie, his best friend, smells of peanut butter and wears her brother’s old jeans. Immediately you get a word picture of the character. You don’t need any extensive descriptions after that.

Daniel has a great imagination. He draws machines with awesome powers. One of his creations is a robot named Pi-zzabot who bakes a pizza and does your Math homework too. Or a bear with octopus-like tentacles on the lower half of his body.

When the tip of his pencil breaks off, he begins to draw with a pencil he finds in the attic. What he doesn’t know is that this pencil is magical, so anything he draws with it comes alive.

His find is so awesome that Daniel cannot bring himself to share it, not even with Annie. And so there is a rift in their friendship. Annie moves on to other friends, and Daniel is left to mull over and regret his selfishness.

Of course, it is a children’s story, and everything works out well in the end, with assorted fantastical characters joining in the good fight against big bully Bucky Thomas on behalf of Daniel.

And of course, the magic pencil also has a magic eraser attached to one end, so some troubles can just be erased out of existence.

The characters, as seen through Daniel’s perspective, appear eccentric and amusing. Young Daniel describes Tommy, his sister Lila’s latest boyfriend as having just enough hair on his chin to make it look like he’s super-glued a caterpillar there and smelling of microwave burritos and cat litter.

Daniel’s observations on most girls are amusing. He has a delicious tone of irony when Lila corrects his English and he tells us that Tommy needs the correction more. After all, it is Tommy who refers to Daniel as a draw-er, when artist is the right word.

He expresses a wry opinion on his mom’s cooking skills, particularly her infamous meatloaf, Dad’s toys in the attic, and Lila’s crazy attempts to make herself look pretty.

About Dad, who is officially least favourite parent, he says, Never mind him. We both know Mom’s the one in charge.

I read this story out loud to La Niña and El Niño  and both gave it a delighted thumbs up. They giggled through the reading, particularly when Pi-zzabot and Mr Whiskers, the cat, came on the scene.

Of course, I exercised parental discretion when reading Daniel’s observations out loud, toning them down suitably to suit the ears of my wee ones, and omitting passages that might shock them. Or give them ideas.

There was one place where Daniel rolls his eyes on hearing his mother’s words. 

That sort of behaviour, fellow-parents, you will agree, must be nipped without mercy.

Book Review: DREAMS DON'T LIE

Title: Dreams Don't Lie
Author: Anusuya M
Publisher: Self-published
Pages: 252

Dreams don’t lie by Anusuya M, a novel of the paranormal thriller genre, is an unpolished debut novel that has a lot of potential.

Wasim Khan is a software engineer who lives in Bombay with his mother Rubina, and younger siblings Karim and Sarina. His father, Shakir, works in the Gulf. Wasim is plagued by the same recurring nightmare in which he sees a woman with a baby fleeing for her life, before being attacked and killed by a knife-wielding attacker. 

Despite enjoying his job, he feels restless and longs for adventure. He joins a gang, managed by a man called Kranti. The gang undertakes dangerous adventures for the purpose of doing good.

While on an assignment for this group, he witnesses the death of his father, and becomes aware that his father is not his father. He also learns the truth about his own identity, that he is actually Shiv Dayanand, the scion of an extremely wealthy family from Shanpur and heir to a huge fortune. He also learns that his parents were murdered, betrayed by a family member. Determined to avenge his parents’ deaths, he visits Shanpur. 

But nothing is as it appears. Wasim/Shiv will need every ounce of his courage, besides some help from beyond the grave, if he is to solve the mystery.

Very soon, you find yourself drawn into the world that Anusuya creates. Steadily but relentlessly, she piles up one devastating realization upon another, as we, and Wasim, slowly come to terms with the kind of person that Aditya, his father, was. The author packs it thick with all the revelations, and just when you think that you could not take any more, the paranormal element kicks in.

I liked the character of the girl, Neha, Wasim’s colleague, who is infatuated with him. She is feisty and vivacious and has the confidence to go after what she wants.

Anusuya does an equally good job with the other characters too. Even though we are not given descriptions to most of them, the characters grow on us through their interactions, which come across as believable.

Bonus points to her for pulling off the challenge of the pace so effectively. Shuffling her chapters between Wasim’s love life to his secret life in Kranti’s group to his home life, she ends each chapter well, leaving you wanting to know more.

I liked the way that Anusuya unraveled the truth about Aditya, bit by bit, through his father’s journals and his own investigations. I also liked the way in which she led Wasim down through various investigations and then brought him to a dead-end. It heightened the excitement of the plot.


If only she had managed to get the technicalities of the writing under control. At many points through the novel, it was distracting when the point of view shifted between paragraphs in the same chapter.

The story of Ankita, Neha’s roommate emerges as a subplot that did not fit in very well with Wasim’s story.

The novel is riddled with grammatical errors. It badly needed a good editor to comb through it. At various points, there are pronouns missing, as seen in four consecutive sentences in the Prologue that began with the words, The guest house.

The Prologue began with the first person account of a woman, presumably Anjali, who speaks of her husband, Aditya. Midway through the account, without warning, it changes to the third person perspective. The shift is most disconcerting.

There were times when the tense changed from one sentence to another in the same paragraph. All these errors exist in the Prologue. All in all, it contained the worst writing in the book. Thereafter the writing began to get better as if the author were beginning to ease into her craft and enjoy it to the fullest.

The rest of the novel suffers from questionable punctuation, particularly when the author employs direct speech. There are spelling errors too, for instance, leceherous instead of lecherous, and burgers who steal instead of burglars. I had to make a conscious effort to put these issues out of my mind, and concentrate on the plot which, to her credit, Anusuya pulls off superbly.

There are some continuity issues too, Wasim tells Kranti about Sharath Bejwa, but some pages later when mention of him crops up again, Kranti asks Wasim who the man is, and Wasim explains all over again, forgetting that he has already explained once.

In another instance, Aditya writes in his journal that Anjali’s mother died during her birth. But when he visits her home, there are pictures of the parents with her as a baby.

Despite having an attacker sneak up on him to kill him, Wasim still does not lock his room.

Certain conventions are flouted with impunity. When the scorpion tattoo is spoken of, Wasim remembers having seen it before. Even though we’ve trailed him for most of the book, we don’t know anything about this tattoo. According to the conventions of the genre, if a thing is critical, it must be introduced to the reader beforehand.

The dialogue too could have done with a little more work.

If Anusuya takes care to avoid all these issues, I think we can expect even better from her in her next book, which is most certainly on its way. Dreams don’t lie ends with the carrot of an impending sequel, an excerpt of which is included at the end of the book as a teaser.

(I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair review.)