It\u2019s almost Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival, and this year, 10-year-old Malar is especially excited. Her cousins Priya, 11, and Kamal, 6, are traveling all the way from their home in Seattle to Pori, the coastal Indian village where Malar and her family live. Although Malar is determined to be a \u201csuper-host,\u201d her cousins don\u2019t make it easy. Kamal ruins the lotus kolam design that Malar draws outside their house, and Priya condescendingly calls Malar\u2019s house \u201ctiny\u201d before proclaiming that she\u2019s counting the days until she can return to \u201ccivilization.\u201d On top of all this, Malar has trouble understanding Kamal\u2019s and Priya\u2019s accents and feels left out of their secret-swapping. It\u2019s only after Priya admits to Malar that she is homesick that Malar begins to empathize with her cousins. As the trio celebrate Pongal with henna, bonfires, and sweets, this understanding grows until the cousins are closer than ever. Malar\u2019s honest, insightful narratorial voice deftly guides readers through rural Indian life, Pongal traditions, and the experience of hosting Western visitors in the global South. While the cousins\u2019 reconciliation feels a bit abrupt, overall, the layered characters and authentic conflict will resonate with a wide range of readers. Final art not seen.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s almost Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival, and this year, 10-year-old Malar is especially excited. Her cousins Priya, 11, and Kamal, 6, are traveling all the way from their home in Seattle to Pori, the coastal Indian village where Malar and her family live. Although Malar is determined to be a \u201csuper-host,\u201d her cousins don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}