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The following article is from IndiaNewEngland.com [2].

In a quest to hold its own among other national children's magazines, Kahani won't give in when it comes to ads, say the creators of the periodical geared towards South Asian American youngsters.

Their position is stubbornly clear: Kahani won't accept any advertisements.

"Everyone says: ‘Take advertising; hand it out for free,'" said Sunitha Das, business director of the Newton-based magazine that recently won a 2008 Parents' Choice Approved Award.

As much as the added revenue would help, Das and Kahani's founder and editor, Monika Jain, see taking ads as selling out.

"Our kids get so many ads thrown at them from so many sources, and we feel this is one place that we really don't need that," said Jain. "One of our missions is not to compromise on quality [even if] it will be the death of us."

The two maintain that the $5 cover price of the subscription-based periodical covers production and printing costs, but just "barely." (They decline to say how many subscribers they have, only that the number is in the four digits.)

Calling it a labor of love, Das and Jain don't get paid for their efforts, and neither do the magazine's other key staff: Sonia Chopra, creative director, and Kavita Ramchandran, art director.

Only a few of the regular contributors get an honorarium.

The magazine's headquarters also double as Jain's family home in Newton, Mass.

Yet, still they attempt to rival mainstream competitors like Sports Illustrated Kids and National Geographic Kids.

Just like its counterparts, Kahani's thick, glossy pages are filled with slick photos and vividly-colored cartoon graphics. Stories include first-person narratives, interviews and fantastic tales.

While their devotion to Kahani doesn't yet pay bills, it has earned them industry recognition. Parents' Choice, which has reviewed children's media since 1978, ranked Kahani alongside Sesame Street Magazine, AppleSeeds, Highlights and other mainstream periodicals when it honored the magazine with the 2008 Parents' Choice Approved Award in late March.

Selecting the magazine out of thousands of other media products for kids, Parents' Choice also awarded Kahani in 2007.

In addition, in 2006, the magazine won a "Distinguished Achievement Award" from the Association of Education Publishers and a "Multicultural Children's Periodical Award" from the National Association for Multicultural Education.

The fact that Kahani has no advertisements, showcases the lives of South Asian Americans, and is for both boys and girls can make it a useful tool, suggested Diane E. Levin, a professor of education in the Department of Early Childhood Education at Wheelock College in Boston.

"Children in this culture in the U.S., they're exposed to so many images from a very young age," said Levin, who has not read Kahani but spoke about it based on a reporter's description.

Levin said that most media targeting kids presents "tough boys who are ready to fight and skinny girls with the classic Caucasian appearance."

She added that because most periodicals are also ad-driven, kids are left with the feeling that "what you wear and what you buy determines how you think about yourself and how you think about others."

Popular media, she said, can also give children - especially those who are not blond-haired and blue-eyed - the impression that they're inadequate.

"It's a problem for all children, but it's especially a problem for kids who are getting messages about their culture or their parent's primary culture....Most of the images they're getting dismisses [their culture] at best and makes it inferior at worst."

Jain said she began the magazine in 2003 out of necessity. When her daughter began reading, she couldn't find any books she could relate to.

"I felt that there was nothing relevant to who she was, a South Asian child born and raised in the U.S., straddling all of these different cultures," said Jain, who also has a 6-year-old son. "Children's literature is supposed to be empowering. If she's not reading about herself, who's she reading about? It's not her, it's not her story. So it came about really for selfish reasons that I wanted something she could read and enjoy."

Das, who joined Kahani two years ago, agrees. Though she grew up in Bangalore, her youngest son was born in the United States and she couldn't find any children's books about South Asian Americans for him. Before she founded Kahani, Das gave him subscriptions to English-language children's magazines from India, but they were of little use.

"I was always reading either religious stories or stories of maharajas and elephants and cobras, which made no sense to my son. We go back to India every year and he doesn't see elephants and maharajas in India today. But those were the only books that I could find here to read."

She said that Kahani has stories about kids who grow up in America, just like her son, only they're South Asian. "They're shopping in Target, they're going to school.. they're trying to get over a pet's death," she said.

The magazine also injects lessons about South Asia, its language, culture, holidays and religions.

A recent issue compares election campaigns in India to those in the United States, features a story on Indian voting machines, and has a trivia page about South Asian leaders such as the late Benazir Bhutto and Srimavo Bandaranaike, the Sri Lankan who became the world's first female prime minister.

"These all cover universal themes, it just has a South Asian flavor," added Jain.

She said that she has learned a great deal about South Asia working on Kahani. Despite being born in Delhi, she grew up in Japan from age 2, attending international schools and only returning a few times to India for visits.

"I grew up on a steady diet of ‘Nancy Drew,'" she said, referring to the famous American mystery novels for kids. "I didn't have any South Asian literature - none whatsoever. So this whole kind of thing is a learning experience for me, too, learning about India, Pakistan, the languages, the foods, the customs....But don't tell that to anybody," she said, smiling.

"That's okay," Das interjected. "I think that's why you could come up with Kahani as a concept. I don't know that I would because I grew up in India. I'm so steeped in it that I don't know what it's like to not have that connection, which is how my child is."

The two are sensitive to avoid giving Kahani readers the feeling that they're different from any other kids. For example, they refuse to put non-English words from South Asia in italics. Jain said this is so children will feel ownership of the terms.

In addition, Jain said, "We don't go into any of the bicultural angst stuff that you read about in the books for adults, like [bestseller novelist] Jhumpa Lahiri always talks about. For us, we just treat being South Asian as normal..."

Das interjected: "Which is what it is."

Source: INDIAnewEngland.com [3]

Copyright 2008 New England Ethnic News, EthnicNewz.org. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten o redistributed without the express permission of the source. Contact Newz for more information.

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