Dehradun, Sept. 27 -- Book Review

A Roof for Norbu: Sujatha Padmanabhan with Labonie Roy

High up in a little Ladakhi village, a young boy named Otsal spies three fluffy kittens and their stern-looking mother in the family storeroom. "Amalele, amalele," he says to himself in confusion, because these wild animals are not exactly familiar cats-they are, his elder brother Lobzang later informs him, "taksram", "riblik", or the "otter of the hills". And the cats intervene to define themselves too: "Pallas' cats. That's us. We agree, that's a rather strange name to have, one with an apostrophe (') as if we belong to someone named Pallas." Because actually they are named after the Prussian zoologist Peter Simon Pallas, whose last name is also a...