Padma, a little girl with two plaits tied with ribbons, a wide mouth and a button nose, not just loves books but also lives in them. With her vivid imagination she is transported into space in a time machne with the heroes of the book The Amazing Eight and their green-eyed star pup, Glazza, who is very mischievous and always gets them into all sorts of trouble.

So, when she hears her mother calling her for dinner rom her hiding place under the sofa, she resists, for she would much rather eat the Star-rock salad from Galaxy Stellar 5689 than the bhindi her mother has cooked, even though her mother informs her that it would enable her to count like a calculator.

Thus jets off this particularly appealing story. A story which blurs the lines of reality and enables the reader to enter the fantasy world of a child. One in which volcanoes erupt fruit juice that freezes into delicious icecream and dreammakers send dreams to children of chocolates of all shapes and sizes.

Children have vivid imagination and all they need is a sheet stretched over a chair to jettison them into space in a rocket, or send them flying in an airplane, or hurtle to distant lands in a train. They love stories that allows them and their imagination to be transported into the magical world of fantasy as in this delightful story.

The cover sets the tone for the book by showing Padma riding a spaceship through space, and the pages inside, with their wild and whacky illustrations, suitably reflect the wild and whacky story, one that is sure to be an all-time favourite with children.