In Janet Manley’s article, Let the Kids Get Weird, author Natalia O’Hara, was quoted to have said, “Children like sweet and safe stories but they also like dark, bleak, unsettling stories… stories that reflect the whole contradictory tangle of their lives.” Recently, two beautifully illustrated books hit bookshelves — When Fairyland Lost its Magic and The Golden Tiger Mountain (both HarperCollins India) — that share O’Hara’s sentiment.

The first title, written by Bijal Vachharajani and illustrated by Rajiv Eipe, reimagines popular fairytale characters like the Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel caught in the middle of the worst climate crisis. The frozen mirror of reason has melted and the night sky has lost its little glimmers of light. The second, co-written by Nicholas Hoffland and Ravi Kapoor and illustrated by Tanaya Vyas, follows the journey of the eight-year-old Rinzing, who risks her life in search of the golden fruit which could cure her grandfather Pala Dawa’s illness. Both books expose young readers to worlds that neither play with nostalgia nor provide moral endings of good and evil. Instead, they focus on more serious themes like environmental consciousness, sickness, and death.