Review: Help! My Aai Wants To Eat Me

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Title: Help! My Aai Wants To Eat Me
Author: Bijal Vachharajani
Illustrator: Priya Kuriyan
Publisher: Puffin
Type: Paperback
Pages: 104
Age group: 7 – 9 years

This book catches your attention right from the name and its cover! And when you start reading the story you just can’t put it down.

Help! My Aai wants to eat me by Bijal Vachharajani and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan is a book that every mother can relate to, yes because we all have wanted to gobble up our little ones! I just had a yummy one for my breakfast .

Usually at our house, every new book that comes is first read by Divit (my 9yo) and then we get a chance to read that. But for this I had clearly told him and Adu, that watch out, don’t trigger the cannibalistic mom in me. We have to read this together. Lol!

So we read this together and of course to enjoy the book Divit has to read it by himself (his words) so he read it at leisure again! Here is what he liked about the book….

HELP! MY AAI WANTS TO EAT ME!

There is no greater joy than reading a good book on a summer afternoon. And this one is really very funny! So anyway, without any further ado, this is the review:

Avi, a 7 year old boy of the Class II-B has this very annoying habit of seeing the pros and cons of things. He also maintains a mental diary. His mental diary burst when he saw a video about a bear eating its second born cub. AND HE IS THE 2ND BORN! Rings a bell? He has been observing his mom. He feels she really wants to eat him! She has followed all the signs a parent shows when they want to eat their child. She said he is cute enough to eat and has been discussing this with his aunts. He actually thinks at this point that there’s a cannibalism gang in the neighbourhood!

But the last straw for Avi was when his Aai got sick. His science teacher had said that bears eat their kids for nutrition when they are sick or the cub is sick! So Avi decides to be brave once he realised he needs to do this for his mom who has always loved him. Can you guess what he does? (my favourite part a.k.a why I like it so MUCCHHHH!).

He marinates himself. Crazy right?! But he is actually a marinated Avi ready to present himself to his mom for her to get better! He loves his mom. But it turns out parents don’t mean it literally when they say they will eat you! What a relief it was for him.

In conclusion, I loved the book because of the funny language and the things Avi does. And also because now I know my mom never can eat me! Haha!

Don’t miss out on this fun read and enjoy the belly bursting laugh riot!

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Shipra’s son, Sharav won this book as a prize as well. His review:

“Help! My Aai wants to Eat me is a hilarious call for help from a 7year old boy, Avi. Avi thinks his mother has cannibalistic intentions- confused to read this, right! Let us munch in to find out more.

It all started when Avi was at school. There was nothing good about that day, from forgetting maths homework (I quite liked his logic though; homework should be at home only) to tinde ki sabzi and rotis in the lunchbox. He had a strange habit of weighing the pros and cons of each situation and noting them down in his mental diary. And that day, his mental diary almost exploded, giving him a ginormous headache reaching BUG (Big Unfriendly Giant) proportions. Two things that saved him from that rather yucky day were cricket and EVS (his favourite subject) class.

He loved EVS as much as figs loved wasps; he loved it more than birdwatchers loved the forest owlet. And it became all the more exciting when it was EVS Film Day! The class of 2B got to watch a wildlife film about bears. Avi watched the movie with utmost exhilaration, and then SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENED. A mama bear ate up her SECOND-BORN cub – slurp, gobble and gone!

Miss Mankand explained that not just bears, lions, and wild dogs also ate their species, sometimes due to stress and sometimes due to lack of resources or to give the mother the required nutrition. Avi returned home in a state of shock; he could not come to terms with this behaviour of the natural world. During dinner time, Avi told Aai about the same, but she shrugged it off with a smile.

“I would love to gobble you up, my cub. Chomp, chomp. You’re so cute; I’d eat you up”.

While the conversation ended for everyone else but for Avi, it had just started. How the story unfolds from this point is too funny to read. Avi is under constant fear that one day or the other Aai will eat him -the second-born. Did Avi end up being Aai’s feast- is interesting to read.

The story is easy to read, with brilliant illustrations by Priya Kuriyan. Priya’s artwork is so good that you can feel Avi’s fear and Aai’s cannibalistic intentions. Also, I loved how the author introduced various animal species throughout the story; how she has drawn attention to the climate change crisis and its effect on our Mother Earth and its inhabitants.