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A New Free-to-download Picture Book About COVID-19 For Children
Super Felix is a new digital picture book from award-winning illustrator, Phoebe Morris, designed to help families talk to their children about the COVID-19 pandemic, and what they can do to help keep themselves and others safe. Created by Morris during New Zealand’s nationwide lockdown, the picture book aims to engage children on an emotional level and ease the fear they may be experiencing during a confusing time for everyone, big and small.
While many current resources about the virus for children simply list facts, Super Felix aims to communicate Coronavirus protocol in a friendly and empowering way, rather than further triggering the helplessness that many kids are currently experiencing. The book seeks to help children make sense of the virus and feel comfortable discussing it with their parents through a familiar medium.
“With Super Felix I wanted to change the way kids think about COVID-19,” says Morris. “By making the virus the villain in a hero’s journey, and reframing the pandemic as an adventure story, it makes our current situation more accessible for children to understand what they need to do. It’s important that we motivate children positively instead of through fear. It’s about making it a safe conversation — fighting the virus becomes a Super Hero mission rather than a trauma.”
Inspired by NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s message about saving lives, Super Felix has been made with an international audience in mind to help educate and reassure children worldwide about COVID-19. After being approached with an offer to have the text translated into Arabic, Morris put out the call for volunteers to translate Super Felix into even more languages, and now ten different translations are underway to help spread the message to as many kids as possible. Here’s what parents have to say about Super Felix online:
“I translated it for my little boy, and he loves it. It is very helpful to explain to a 3 year old an abstract concept like an invisible virus.”
“I read this to my son; he was very into it and it helped explain what’s going on!”
Super Felix is available as a free to download PDF/EBook from Morris’ website, along with information about her other work at https://phoebemorriscreative.com/superfelix
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