Note from Editor :: Anshumala Gupta

This is what Anshumala and her team want in terms of content for Indradhanush. Quoted below are exerpts from an email she sent out in that regard.

1) Indradhanush is designed for children of 10 to 16 years of age ( originally till 14 was the idea, then we realized there was tremendous variation in children, their capabilities and backgrounds, so we made the range itself flexible. Now even class 10th children read Indradhanush, as well as class 5th)

2) I don't mind long stories too, running into 6-7 pages ( you must have seen them in the magazine) or more, if they are very good.

3) I would love to have short cartoons strips, not necessarily a series, can be disjointed cartoons, as long as they are Indian in their context, and would not look alien to an Indian rural child.

4) Often the materials I get showcase boys. I would like to have 50-50 of boys and girls. When we are giving suggestions to people, we can underline this, otherwise this vital fact is often forgotten/overlooked.

 

 

5) The magazine is not only a 'science' magazine. If we want to underline 4 main objectives of the magazine, they would be :

a.	Promoting reading interest in children by exposing them to good literature.
b.	Building a scientific attitude.
c.	Stressing the humanitarian basis of everything we do. (Without humanism, I think science and technology can become draconian too). So this I would consider as the most important objective. Genrally the stories and poems we choose would have an underlying humanism in them.

d.	Stressing on plutaritarian values- make children see the variety in the nature, cultures, religions, peoples, ethnic groups and so on and thus appreciate the largeness and plurality of humanity on this earth, without having any inferiority or superiority for one's own. more...