“If I were Lord of Tartary, Myself and me alone, My bed should be of ivory, Of beaten gold my throne...” Walter de la Mare
How often do you hear five-year-olds enthusiastically reciting poems? Instead, such delightful verses have been replaced by catchy but meaningless songs such as ‘Munni', ‘Sheela' and ‘Jalebi Bai', not to forget ‘Chamak Challo'. There is no escaping the television channels which fill their air time with these tracks and, as a result, most parents are tired of their little ones humming and even dancing to them.
Keeping this in mind, Disney Junior has come up with a new programme titled, “A Poem Is....” The animated series will have a voice-over narrating poems set to scenes and images from Disney films such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Dumbo” and “Bambi”. Children can look forward to listening to poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, John Howard Payne, A.A. Milne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow among others, and learn them in an engaging manner rather than just having to read them from a textbook. The show intends to target a wide audience and is, therefore, aired in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and the works of some of the poets have been translated into the regional languages for better understanding.
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Suhasini Mani Ratnam who lends her voice to the Tamil and Telugu versions says, “Children these days know poetry only to score marks in school. This show is about making poetry interesting for them and it's only right that somebody fond of the language does it.”
About taking up the offer, she says, “It just took a call from Disney for me to say yes to the programme. It brought back memories of my first visit to Disneyland. This is the kind of entertainment that should be given to children. This makes them precocious.”
“A Poem Is…” is targeted at children aged 2 to 7 and their families.
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