Mickey & Co. turn educators
Disney Publishing brings out workbooks with characters children are familiar with
M ickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy et al are being put to work. School work, that is. Disney Publishing Worldwide (India) has come out with two ranges of workbooks for young children for the first time in India.
“We’ve always had activity and interactive books, but this is the first time we’re coming out with a series focussed on learning through fun,” says Roshini Bakshi, director, Disney Consumer Products Asia and India.
The result of extensive consumer research in the country, the workbooks will have the popular characters helping children with their work, whether it’s fill-in-the-blanks and addition problems for five to seven year olds (the “School Skills” range) or learning the alphabet for pre-schoolers (the “Smart Beginnings” range).
While “Smart Beginnings” will feature ‘core characters’ little children are likely to be familiar with, such as good ol’ Mickey and trusty Pluto, the “School Skills” series will have greater variety, with themes from Disney movies such as “Toy Story”.
“The whole idea is to engage children, make work colourful and friendly, so they don’t want to get up and come away,” says Roshini. “We’re trying to help moms along with their task!”
Their research so far indicates they’ve been pretty successful, according to Roshini.
Young moms they’ve spoken to say that the books actually managed to wean children off the TV for a bit, since the books made them feel like they were spending time with their favourite cartoon characters.
An effort has also been made to make the books as accessible to children in India as possible. The colourful characters on the pages may come from Hollywood, but the English in the books, for example, is ‘Indian English’ so children can relate to them more.
“The educationists who worked with us on these have incorporated local themes, and made subtle changes such as using ‘football’ instead of ‘soccer’…More
