Originally from India, Tanmoy and his wife Madhumita immigrated to New Zealand in 2008, with their son Rudra being born two years later.
Like all nine-year-olds, Rudra’s curiosity is insatiable and, like all children, he began asking his parents more and more questions about the critical issues that he saw around him.
Wanting to bond more with his son, but not wanting him to rely just on social media or the Internet for his answers, the two of them set up Moonstruck Dad, a YouTube channe starring a nameless father and son trying to answer some of the questions that other kids Rudra’s age might have.
“To satisfy Rudra’s curiosity, we started this YouTube channel to give his creativity a bit of an outlet.”
While Tanmoy doesn’t have a tremendous fondness for technology, he soon discovered that YouTube gave them a platform to reach out to other people and share their ideas.
The result was a series of one to two-minute videos that tackled questions and problems that kids around the seven to nine age group might be wondering about. These range from why maths is essential to everyday life, to why it’s important to be resilient in the face of defeat.
To their surprise, Moonstruck Dad started becoming something of a hit, with even a teacher as far afield as Japan translating one of the videos and showing it to his own students.
And if that weren’t enough, international authors including Australia’s Lian Tanner, a writer famous for her work in child fiction, encouraged Tanmoy and Rudra’s efforts.
As a result, they recently wrote and illustrated their first book titled ‘Moonstruck Dad, Monster Hunting’ starring the father and son duo. In fact, when Tanmoy asked us to see if we’d be interested in writing about them, their book had already been downloaded a whopping 400 times and had been voted #1 scariest story by Amazon.
When I asked Tanmoy about Moonstruck Dad’s success and why he thought it had become such a hit, he told me he had a feeling that most parents wanted to engage more with their kids, but for whatever reason might not be able to approach particular topics with them. He thought that maybe the Moonstruck Dad videos were helping to spark discussions between parents and their children.
“If people can be inspired to talk to their kids about things like bullying, or things like inclusiveness, I feel that we could have a better community and a better world.” (Kerry Lee)
To find the Moonstruck Dad YouTube video channel, visit www.youtube.com/c/tanmoychakrabarti
And for more information about their new book, please visit www.amazon.com/dp/B08532NDWB/
You can email them at: E: moonstruckdad@gmail.com
#moonstruckdad #ponsonbynews #iloveponsonby #ponsonby #auckland #aucklandshippestrip #Greylynn #family #friends #westmere #coxsbay #greylynnpark #westernsprings