A Garland of Henna

Born into “a long garland/ of teachers and keepers of art,” a girl worries over her early efforts at rendering henna designs in this rhythmically narrated and lusciously drawn tale. After her mother makes “one seed,// two stems,/ three leaves,/ four flowers” bloom on Nikita’s palm, Mom and Nani tell the child they will teach her, too. Nikita consults the henna notebook that Nani carried from India, and practices on paper, but when Nani gives Nikita a cone filled with mehndi paste, Nikita squeezes too hard, creating an ugly blot on Nani’s palm. She worries (“What if I can’t draw like them? What if I can’t learn like them?”), but an outing and further practice suggest that the child will “one day... become part of her family’s long garden.” Henna art motifs swirl throughout Sreenivasan’s gold- and olive-hued digital drawings, offering henna portraits of Nikita’s family, while Bajaj’s prose amplifies various aspects of henna art in this connective work. An author’s note concludes. Ages 3–7. (June)