#420 - Petu Pumpkin Tiffin Thief
by Arundhati Venkatesh and illustrated by Shilpa Ranade
“Petu Pumpkin Tiffin Thief” by Arundhati Venkatesh and illustrated by Shilpa Ranade. Published by Duckbill. A hilarious story of Petu Pumpkin and his friends who have to save their lunches from being gobbled up by him :)
Petu Pumpkin is always eating. He seems to like anything and everything. He is hungry all the time. He gets quite a few boxes of food from home but they never seem to last for too long. He seems to finish them in a jiffy and isn’t satisfied yet. He then starts taking the tiffin boxes of his friends in class and emptying them to their annoyance. After all this isn’t fair. Why should they go hungry day after day for Petu’s sake?
Jatin, Sachin and Kiran decide to form a secret society to solve this problem. They had to save their lunches from Petu. And it wasn’t going to be so easy or straightforward. They would have to come up with a perfect plan and execute it. It had to be foolproof and planned in secrecy. Nitin follows them and ends up becoming a member of the society. Their magic potion is a flop and the superglue idea ends up as a disaster. What can they do next? Is there no way to stop Petu from eating their lunches? Will their secret society last? Read this hilarious book to find out.
My nine year old and I enjoyed reading this book. It was full of fun. The humour was spot on and the characters were so comical. Petu chomping down everything was so amusing. Jatin and his spelling mistakes were absolutely comical. The accompanying illustrations added a lovely touch with their cheekiness. All in all this was a lovely combination of fun and humour making it an entertaining read. And all that mention of various dishes is bound to make one go hungry. Maybe not as much as Petu, but surely enough to go looking for some snacks at least :p The book is part of the “Hole Books” series of books which are meant for children who have begun reading chapter books independently. This was our third hole book after “Nisha Small : The Knot of Gold” and “Chitti’s Travelling Book Box”. There are a couple of other books in the series featuring Petu Pumpkin which we are looking forward to read now :)
Recommended Age
The book is apt for children aged 7 and above.
Reasons to Read
The story is quite hilarious making it an interesting and entertaining read for all school going children who love a dash of madcap adventure and humour :)