Bindia Thapar’s artworks are prized by publishers for their neatness, completeness and near perfection. She is also that rare children’s illustrator whose work is consistently recognizable by its heart-warming quality, whose work comes to the door of cute but veers away without anybody knowing she was in the neighbourhood. That’s Bindia, and Curiosity is a fine example of her deft and delightful touch.   The book is about what it says it is about: idioms presented and explained with words and pictures (there are some bonus words and pictures as well). One of my favourites in the book is ‘to bell the cat’. It has personal resonances: a tiny grandmother wagging a long right thumb asking ever so often, ‘But hoo vill bell thee kyat?’ In Curiosity, the meaning is explained in a few words: ‘to do something dangerous, to help others’, and then there is a sort of annotation or referencing: ‘The phrase comes from an old story. A family of mice could not get food because they feared the cat. The mice decided that if they could tie a bell around the cat’s neck, they would know where the cat was at all times. Everyone thought it was a great idea, until one mouse asked, “Who will bell the cat?”’ Exactly.   I love this book. The idioms are smartly selected, the animals and their images are keenly observed and presented, the text is well arranged and the book is comfortable to hold and flip through. So, congratulations to the whole team. But why is there no referencing for some, such as ‘to have more fun than a barrel of monkeys’ or ‘the early bird catches the worm’? I itch to know more. Nobody who pores over this book will forget anything in it. So, why do these not come in our own Indian languages? Do not talk about costs and pricing and markets. There are ways to do it if we want to. In any case, the book is worth every rupee in any language for the joy it brings, for the love it evokes for animals and the world at large, for the little and big things it brings to your notice, for all the things it makes you think about. If, after all this, it still pinches, all I can suggest is turn your back on that pizza. Go for the one that ...