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EDUCATOR JANICE ROBINSON-CELESTE DEVELOPS MORE DIVERSITY IN ANIMATIONS AND HIGHLY REGARDED ORIGINAL BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Nationwide -- Successful Black Parenting magazine is diving into the world of animation and is featuring cartoons with original stories and some familiar rhymes for children, but there's one catch, all of the animations feature families of color. "There is a lack of diversity in the animation world," says Janice Robinson-Celeste, Publisher of Successful Black Parenting magazine, who is a former teacher with a degree in early childhood education. "Many of the animations created empower children and teach them life skills, while others are traditional nursery rhymes that encourage repetition and call and response from children."
The idea behind the animations is to give children pride in seeing images that are like them on-screen -- representation matters. "Our first test was to produce an African-American Finger Family cartoon," said Robinson-Celeste. The test went well and the Finger Family can be seen on the Ethnic Animations YouTube channel doing the popular dance, The Floss, between choruses.
According to Robinson-Celeste, all of the animations have companion children's books. The first book produced is Big Kid coming out this summer.
Big Kid, as the cover suggests, is about making small children feel powerful in a big, big world. "Children go through so much and with Big Kid, they can pretend to be as big as an elephant or a dinosaur to help them manage a scary moment," said Robinson-Celeste. The book uses a public speaking technique to empower children to have courage. "Anyone can watch and learn from our books and animations," said Robinson-Celeste.
