« E-book woes | Main | New air pollution rules »

Bookmark in Connotea

Science in comics

Very heartening to hear that a series of medical comic books for kids, launched in the UK last month, would soon make a debut in India.

The idea behind the project is brilliant -- telling stories to explain swine flu, asthma, cardiac arrest and hundreds of such medical conditions in the language of a ten year old. UK-based Medikidz comics will come to India with their glossy tales of the adventures of five superheroes in a make-believe land. The books are written and reviewed by doctors and will help parents, teachers and children basics of difficult to understand medical concepts.

comics.jpg

I remember UNICEF's girl child Meena, parrot in tow, in comic books and animated films taking on tough issues such as HIV/AIDS in the south Asian region. Meena was a greatly inspiring example of communicating health and education even at the village level. Some time back I was thoroughly impressed with the work of Jean Pierre Petit, who uses comics in France (and now the rest of the world) to tell science stories.

Also India's Centre for Science and Environment's commendable publication 'Gobar Times' (Gobar is cow dung in Hindi) dejargonising environment issues for children.

I'm sure there are hundreds of lesser known publications that we must know about. I would love to hear of such regional and national publications that are successfully doing this relatively difficult job of taking science to children. Writing simply and effectively is the most challenging way of communicating and my respect goes to such publications who do this tirelessly, sometimes as an act bordering on philanthropy.

Posted by Subhra Priyadarshini on October 30, 2009
Categories: Publishing | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs.nature.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/9723

Comments

A friend took me to some great science songs on YouTube and I can't stop gushing over them. For all those interested in science for children, I am very happy to forward you to a couple of these wonderfully made songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ-1lfammjk&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFoC-uxRqCg

Posted by: Subhra Priyadarshini | November 12, 2009 12:52 PM

It is a wonderful attempt to dejargonise medical concepts. Kids will definitely become aware of many concepts in a fun and learn method. However, it is essential to publicise such innovative programmes and parents must encourage such movements.

Posted by: Payal Joshi | November 22, 2009 05:18 AM

Post a comment

Comments will be reviewed by the blog editors before being published, mainly to ensure that spam and irrelevant material (such as product advertisements) are not published . Please keep your comment brief. Excessively long or offensively phrased entries will be edited.

We strongly encourage you to use your real, full name. E-mail addresses are required in case we need to discuss your comment with you directly. We won't publish your e-mail address unless you request it.

Please enter the numbers you see below - this helps us to avoid spam. If you are having trouble with this system, you can send your comment by e-mail to 'theniche at nature.com'.

please enter code