Part 3/4 Weaving a New Bilingual Rhythm for Holi with Consent: Behind-the-Book Series
This is part 3 of our 4-part Behind-the-Book long form series documenting the making of an English-Hindi picture book, Happy Hippotastic Holi!, for children ages 3-8 years old. Coming Holi 2026! PRE-ORDER today to unlock free goodies, and celebrate consent in celebrations.
We are weaving a new rhythm of Holi. One that beats to consent, choice, and care. One that lives in two languages side by side.
To do this, we were intentional with our choices. Characters. Movements. Language.
This is where our hippos shine.
How Hippos Help?
In Part 1, I shared that hippos’ water-loving nature and cheerful alliteration make them irresistible for playful Holi splashes. They also help us center behavior. Hippos free our storytelling from identity markers and keep attention on what matters most: how to ask, how to listen, and how to respond.
This sits within a long Indian storytelling tradition. From the Panchtantra to the Jataka Tales, animals have carried human truths and complex ideas.
Illustrator Natasha B. Padhiar said it simply:
“I liked that I didn’t have to worry about gender roles or cultural stereotypes. Hippos keep the tone playful enough to allow different levels of discussion depending on a child’s age.”
I had initially wondered if hippos would be too clunky to express expressions. Natasha proved the opposite. A raised eyebrow, a scrunched mouth, a body turned away, or a paw held up in anxiety or extended in solidarity carry diverse emotional beats. Children can read those cues on the page just as they learn to read them on a playground.
Slowing Down to Create Inclusive Spaces
In Part 2, Storyboarding Consent, we shared how we slowed the conflict to hold space for discomfort when a no is ignored.
Here, Natasha plays with scale and placement to navigate the nuance. She shares:
“In bullying scenes, I made bigger hippos crowd the smaller ones. But I also drew some scenes where they were the same size, so it didn’t turn into a simple rule of big equals bully and small equals victim.”
A hippo at the center carries weight. A hippo at the edge feels pressured in. Speech bubbles are used to help clarify tone. Children can see the difference between being pressured and being invited into the celebration.
That pressure is familiar to adults too. In a set titled “Extroverts and Chaos” (available on YouTube), an Indian stand up comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath jokes that people often measure the success of Holi by how many others they can force to participate, and how the refusals are mocked. The audience laughs because they recognize both sides of that joke.
In the second half of the Happy Hippotastic Holi! Natasha continues to use pause, scale, and placement to challenge forced participation as “normal” Holi play.
Our hippos break old patterns and invite a different rhythm where respect for choice is woven in. Holi’s joy does not come from forcing numbers into play. It comes when everyone feels safe to join, to pause, or to say no.
Natasha balances colors, body language, and white space to model this new rhythm by spread by spread.
Moving with the Bilingual Beat
We were just as intentional about how the story moves across two languages. English and Hindi do not move the same way. English often reads without the grammatical gender. Hindi weaves gender into everyday words and sentences. To keep behavior at the center, we used a third-person, plural-form narrative that works across both languages.
For translation, I wanted the English to carry the same context as the Hindi. That meant letting go of standard Western rhyme meters and embracing a Hindi beat that gives English its own lyrical rhythm. One book, two languages, one bilingual beat.
Another BrooklynBiharn hallmark you will find here is the absence of Hindi transliteration and the use of a large format to give equal space to both scripts: Hindi in Devanagari and English in Roman.
This is a child-centered, literacy-driven choice that began with my first bilingual board book My Heart Would Like Some More, Please! which was printed at 10.5 × 8 (large format) without transliteration. Roman letters cannot reliably capture Hindi sounds, and transliteration can confuse early readers who are learning English phonics. Introducing Devanagari reinforces Hindi’s phonics alongside English’s, and supports independent reading in both.
For Happy Hippotastic Holi! We chose 8.5 x 11 to let text and illustrations breathe. Natasha arranged the spreads so Hindi and English are always in inclusive conversation, never crowding, each keeping its own rhythm while moving together.
As a parent raising children with joyful, Devanagari-led Hindi bilingualism, I keep coming back to this belief inspired from my children’s journey: Devanagari is not a barrier. It is a bridge to Hindi and to more than a hundred South Asian languages that share the script.
By giving it equal presence on the page, we invite children to feel both languages as part of the same celebration. A Hindi-audio read aloud will be available for families who do not yet read Devanagari, so they can hear the sounds of the language while seeing the script.
Looking Ahead
Natasha and I are proud of the rhythm we are weaving in Happy Hippotastic Holi! Colors celebrated with choice. Devanagari-led Hindi beats alongside English. The language of consent in action, on the page, and in conversation.
In Part 4, the final post in this series, we will share how the story stretches beyond its pages, helping everyone celebrate Holi in their own ways and turning storytime into lived practice for families and classrooms.
🌸 Thank you and shukriya for reading till the end. We would love to hear your thoughts. Share them in the comments below and preorder your copy here.
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