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Illustrated book explains viral pandemic to small children

An illustrated picture book for children has been created to help explain the pandemic to kids.

An Anglia Ruskin University student has created a picture book to help explain the Covid-19 pandemic to young children, and has directed profits from UK April sales to local charities.

The book is called The Day The Lines Changed and is written and illustrated by Kelley Donner, who lives in Cambridge with her husband and three young sons. The book is aimed at children under 10 years old and attempts to explain the tumultuous time we are all experiencing thanks to the COVID-19 virus through the lives of a family of green lines.

The 45-year-old who is originally from the USA told the press: “My children have asked a lot of questions about what the coronavirus is, how it travels, where it came from, whether their grandparents will be OK, and why they can’t go to school.”

“I hope this story will help to make those difficult conversations a little bit easier.”

Profits will be donated to charities including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust’s Head to Toe, which focuses on mental health, and the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.

“Without ever saying “Coronavirus” or “Pandemic,” The Day the Lines Changed explains what it means to live through a viral outbreak and gives children a much needed, optimistic view of the future. Through the use of ripped paper and basic shapes, Kelley Donner takes a frightening and complicated pandemic and turns it into an uplifting, easily understandable story about the life of a green line. The Day the Lines Changed, a picture book for children between the ages of 2 and 8 should be a welcome resource for parents, teachers, and caregivers who are trying their best to explain the pandemic to worried children.

Carefree and happy, the green line lives together with her family, goes to school during the week, and on weekends visits the town square. Then one day some of the orange and purple lines begin to turn crooked and suddenly, everything is different for the green line and her family. Just as green begins to worry, if her own family might turn crooked, one line makes a fantastic discovery which changes the lives of the lines forever.”

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