Since the beginning of 2020, the sudden outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has disrupted people’s lives all over the world. Under this circumstance, the children’s reading committees of three major publishing associations in China (i.e. the Children’s Books Committee of the Publishers Association of China [the PAC Committee], the Professional Children’s Books Committee of the China Redactological Society [the CRS Committee] and the Organizing Committee of “Children ’s Newspaper Reading Season” of China Periodical Association) jointly launched a campaign called “Where there’s love, there’s hope”, with the aim of encouraging all member organizations to create children’s books and drawings about the epidemic. Sun Zhu, Director of the PAC Committee and President of China Children’s Press & Publication Group, called on all those working in the children’s book publishing industry in China to take an active part in the campaign, thus contributing their due share to the fight against COVID-19.
On Februry 29, Zhang Mingzhou, President of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) launched a translation and reading program named “Picture Books about COVID-19 for Children Around the World”, and called for all member units to participate.
Epidemic waits for no one. Chinese publishers quickly responded to the call by organizing the creation of a number of publications to disseminate COVID-19-related knowledge and prevention and control measures. To date, member organizations of the PAC Committee, the CRS Committee and the Chinese Board on Books for Young People (CBBY) have donated the copyrights of a total of 60 books to the program.
Eleven books were selected by the expert team of the program and translated by over 200 volunteer translators into a dozen of foreign languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Spanish,Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Nepali, Sinhala, Tamil and Persia. They are now available in electronic forms at Lifetree Books (www.lifetreebooks.org.cn). An addition of 40 books have been recently published in China, and are now available for Chinese language readers worldwide for free.
We hope that these newly published books will bring consolation to children all over the world at such a time of crisis, arming them with science-based knowledge in the fight against the virus. They will also help cultivate children’s interest in reading, turning them into lifelong readers and learners. Finally, we hope that they can also serve as a bridge for promotion of international understanding and friendship.
Due to copyright reasons, not all books have been translated into all the languages mentioned above.
If any publishing agency is interested in introducing those books for publication, please contact us at alisa@bailuqiao.com, and we will help you establish contact with the copyright owner(s) as soon as possible.
Translated by WANG Xueyan
Revised by GONG Rui
