An American storyteller and a writer has published a story book that will help children increase literacy on coronavirus to protect themselves and their neighbors.
The Children’s tale book titled ‘My Hero is You’ by Helen Patuck explains how children can fight COVID-19 and protect themselves, their friends and families from coronavirus and how they can manage difficult emotions when confronted with a new and rapid changing reality caused by the pandemic.
The tale book was created to explore children’s questions and fears about the COVID-19 epidemic.
Patuck, also an illustrator drew his book on a survey of 1,700 children, parents and teachers in 104 countries.
In the book, a girl named Sara lies in bed at night, feeling scared and helpless. She misses seeing friends and going to school. As she drifts off, a dragon appears, and they fly all over the world together on a shared mission of teaching children how to keep themselves and their families safe from COVID-19.
“Sometimes the most important thing we can do as friends is to protect each other, even if that means staying away from each other for a while,” the dragon explains to children.
‘My Hero Is You’ targets children aged 6 to 11 years old. It was developed in collaboration with various humanitarian organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
UNICEF representative in Rwanda, Julianna Lindsey said, “we are working with the ministry of education to make sure that we introduce My Hero Is You to children for them to know about COVID-19 to protect themselves. The book has been published in many languages across the globe. But it will be translated into Kinyarwanda and introduced to children.”
“My Hero is you is an important children’s book because we need to be sure that children are safe even when they go back to school. There are also take-home messages to parents about preventing COVID-19. Reminding parents to wash hands and cover their nose when they need to sneeze. ” Lindsey said on national television on April 15, 2020.
According to UNICEF, 1.5 billion children across the globe are out of school due as the world seeks to protect against the lockdown in a bid to stop the spreading of COVID-19.
Since the first reported case of COVID-19 on 14 March 2020 in Rwanda the number of cases has increased to 136. However, 54 patients have so far recovered.
