We’ve all had our ‘wow moments’ as little kids while listening and later, reading stories about the animal kingdom. For many, including this writer, Rudyard Kipling’s classic, The Jungle Book did the trick. Then, came along Ruskin Bond and his bag full of humour-tinged stories that offered fascinating insight into animal life in the Himalayas and its surroundings.

So, when we received a copy of Fierce-Face the Tiger by Dhan Gopal Mukherji, we were left wondering about why this wonderful piece of literature for young readers, about India’s jungles and its inhabitants, had not been tom-tomed about or made accessible for public consumption. We found our answer in the fact that Mukherji, despite being born in undivided Bengal, spent a large part of his life overseas, and was widely read and celebrated there; in fact, he remains the only Indian to have won the American Library Association’s prestigious Newbery Medal for his children’s book, Gay Neck: The Story of a Pigeon.