The Enchanted Garden is a charming and delightful book ; it opens up possibility for both children and adults to pause and rethink how we want relate to one another in the world.

 

The Enchanted Garden by Jessi Kaur is a children’s book that invites both adults and children into a familiar and comforting janam sakhi , childhood fable. The tale tells the story of the cobra sheltering Guru Nanak Dev Ji in the hot sun as the Guru takes a nap in a field.  Kaur has revived this janam sakhi by creating a contemporary garden full of life as the setting for Guru Nanak’s encounter with the cobra.

 

The garden is bustling with life, a web of relationships amongst animals, birds, plants, and flowers, and the oh-so familiar relationship dynamics that bubble up in society when we lose sight of the bigger picture.  It is an inviting, energetic Shangri-la layered with natural beauty.  Kaur has depicted a garden thick with diversity in animal and plant life, which mirrors our global communities today and drives home the importance of having respect for diversity in our local communities.

 

The Enchanted Garden also celebrates Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s emotionally abundant spirit that reminds the reader there is more than enough love and attention for all the animals, plants, and flowers connected to Wahe Guru.  And when we as adults and children can see the Divine Light in all living creatures and people, we become more energized and connected to the world around us. This take away message of emotional and spiritual abundance is an important one for children to understand and feel.  And the brilliance lies in the shift away from abundance in material goods to abundance in love, trust, and respect.

 

Kaur has written the story in four line stanzas that rhyme.  The word choices are fun and adventurous for emerging and established readers.  It reads like a Dr. Seuss book and has the deeper messaging of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scriptures.   Coupled with the vibrant imagery and illustrations, The Enchanted Garden becomes a place that welcomes back readers again and again.  The book has the promise of leaving the reader in a peaceful and hopeful place.  The Sikh girl in me yearned for a book like this in childhood.  I am grateful my children will have a copy.  It will give me a chance to curl up with it at night too!

--Meeta Kaur, Writer and Managing Editor of The Sikh Love Stories Project

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Jessi Kaur’s The Enchanted Garden of Talwandi

Talwandi is a village in pre-partition Punjab where Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, was born in 1469. Jessi Kaur’s The Enchanted Garden of Talwandi innovatively maps this historic and geographic space on an imaginary horizon that children would devour so eagerly! But parents are equally alike to enjoy Jessi ‘s modern visual and sonorous rendition of the traditional narratives of Baba Nanak (Janamsakhis as they are called). Like her previous books – Dear Takuya and The Royal Falcon — this too embodies western literary icons and idioms, and opens the world of Sikhism to a global readership.

 

The garden of Talwandi is alive with animals and birds and flowers and trees and ponds and clouds, and even a king cobra. Artist Arshia Singh illustrates these various protagonists animated with individual character and attitude. At the beginning of the story the roses, lilies, bunnies, and mynahs are petty and competitive: each one vies to be praised by Baba Nanak. But when they witness the venomous king cobra spreading his hood to shade a serenely sleeping Nanak, they realize the supreme power of Guru Nanak’s personality and his love for each and all. The much needed pluralism in our dangerously

divided society is expressed by the wise owl:  “Baba loves us all/We are different, no doubt. /But each one of us is special, / haven’t you heard him say?” As the narrative progresses the protagonists begin to transform. With their jealousies gone they experience their lovely landscape with Baba at its center, and enchanted, they elicit: “Please tell us more about/the message divine, / and the miracle of love /that will change our lives.”

 

Jessi’s playful characters awaken readers to the richness and magic of love that permeates our universe. Their profoundly simple and breathtakingly delightful discourse evokes an intimate feel for the presence of the Sikh Guru and his egalitarian message. Seeing and/or hearing them inspires the aesthetic mood of vismad (wonder or enchantment) intrinsic to Sikh life. Jessi’s ingenious rhymes continue to echo long after the book is put away. Indeed The Enchanting Garden of Talwandi plants the seeds of future love and beauty in the readers’ imagination. It should foster an enduring bond and shared pleasure between young and old, eastern and western, Sikh and Christian.

--Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

 

The best way to bring about awareness about Sikh identity is to gift

The Enchanted Garden of Talwandi to as many teachers, libraries and friends as you can!

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Item:  The Enchanted Garden of Talwandi

 

Available as a Kindle / Ebook on Amazon - Amazon Link

 

 

 

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Deliver Time:   6-8 days

 

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