Shake up your prejudices

When Indian artist Raghava KK and his musician wife Netra Srikanth became parents, they quickly realized that children’s books are full of propaganda about social norms.

Raghava wanted to introduce his children to a more open-minded perspective on family diversity. So he developed an interactive storybook for iPad that takes children through mundane family life, such as meals, naps and baths, but with a difference: At any point in the story, with a shake of the iPad, the child can change the family structure from heterosexual to same-sex parents and other scenarios.

Ipad art Project- Pop It at home from Raghava KK on Vimeo.

“It’s a metaphor for shaking from one perspective to another,” said Raghava in an interview with Mashable. “The relationship between parent and child does not change if they have two moms, two dads. I’m challenging the concept of family.”

He wants to continue to develop the “shake up” idea, and apply it to themes such as cultural diversity (especially to ethnic and religious tensions in his part of the world), and to open-source it so that others can develop their own stories.

The story, called “Pop It”, is apparently available at the app store for $1.99 (although I can’t seem to find it at the moment).

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