Culture Dabba is a South Asian children magazine loaded with fun stories, kids activities and most importantly cultural information of India in a very simplistic way so the kids of Indian origin could easily relate and understand.
Culture Dabba is for children ages 5 and above. Each page is carefully curated with interesting information for kids to read and learn. Each page or fa ew relevant topics also had Youtube animated videos which I thought is an excellent way to use technology to bind physical and digital reads.
I was looking for a magazine like Magic Pot(published in India) for a long time with no luck. I happen to know about the Culture Dabba through South Asian Children Content Festival conducted by IMC in the Bay area last year. It’s no wonder why we quickly got hold of the magazine. Starting from page one the magazine just pulls in both adults and kids on an Indian cultural journey.
Instead of summarizing the book I thought I would walk you through few pages of the book to see what you would find, So let’s go!
The magazine started off with explaining about Ganesh Chathurthi and immersion of the idols. After reading this short paragraph to my son, I went on to Youtube to show him how big the immersion festival is and how big the idols were. We had fun watchinga few videos, and we got back to reading the magazine.
Next up was a story “Celebrate with Krishna and Aanya.” The story is about Krishna and Aanya talking about team play in Flag football. Through the story, the festival of Onam and the Snake boat race in Kerela was introduced. Sanke boat race is all about team play as they have over 100 oarsmen and it’s a great way to tell kids about fun games that happen in India. We indeed went on to youtube to watch a video of this race and also the Onam festival.
Next few pages were activity pages. These are just not activity pages. They are a treasure of information for your kids.Through activity pages, some other cultural topics were introduced. Through Jalebi maze the magazine presents what a Jalebi is, through a Turban activity kids would know what a turban is, a word stair activity talks about the bridges build by Nature in the North-eastern parts of India and that one such bridge is in Cherrapunji( Did it strike a chord? Yes that Cherapunji which holds the record for most rainfalls in the world!). Many other activities including autorickshaw, footwear activity(which talks about the ancient footwear of India) and more help kids to learn about their heritage and roots in an entertaining and engrossing way.
Then we read about Battle of wits. A story of who is wiser Ganesh or Kathikeya.
The magazine introduces kids to the superheroes of India, Avanti the fastest car of India, Tejas the Superfast Fighter Jet of India.
The Culture Dabba Children’s magazine also covered the festivals of color, Ratha Yatra in Orissa(Odisha) and also places like Pondicherry. Pondicherry is an old French town, and it got it’s independence from France in 1954 much later than the rest of India. I have been to Pondicherry and this read brought back all the memories. It’s such fun little French colony to visit!
Did we not go on a culture ride to India in just one read?!
I was not compensated in anyway for this review. The Opinions are 100% mine and no way biased
