Printakid responds...

Noemi Berlus, President and founder of Printakid actually took the time to respond to my post last week about their product. First of all, big ups for doing that. I think she answers much of my questions about the product quite well.

She made me realize:

• I guess one doesn't HAVE To make one's kid the star of the show, maybe just give the protagonist a name that makes sense for whatever background one is from, say Mohammed, or Riad, or something like that. Ok, that would be cool. I did have the luxury of growing up in Taiwan where most of the kids books had Chinese kids doing freakish Chinese things (like grown men wearing diapers to entertain their senile parents as role models, but that's another blog entry all together), so that's definitely a good thing (not the diaper part, but the reading books with protagonists that looks like me part)
• Chill out already with the skin colour! Basically, get a grip on what skin colour gets called what when you are setting up the story. None of that gets reflected in the actual story. So you know, relax. (ed note, I am paraphrasing here... Noemi at no point uses phrases such as "chill out", "get a grip", or other such silliness...)
• They Charlie Brown the parents, so you never actually see too much of the parents to have to care about what ethnic backgrounds they are. Again, bonus points for making different parental arrangement possible.

So yes, all the political correctness hilarity asides, this is a good effort. At the end of the day, who can argue with giving parents more options as to what cultural images, role models, and stories they can give to their children?

Read her response to my original post