Science with a comic touch

"Landing of a Mars rover represents China's comprehensive national strength. Telling the story to children will arouse their interest in space exploration," Li says.

The Ministry of Education announced that all primary schools in China should offer science courses for students from grade one, instead of the previous requirement of grade three, starting from September 2017.

It means science has become an equally important fundamental course at primary schools, just like Chinese and mathematics.

Li and his team have published several other comic books in recent years that popularize scientific knowledge among children, hoping these will be a supplement to the current science education in China.

"It's important to enhance one's science literacy since childhood. One way is to encourage them to read related books," Li says.

He says he notices that current children's books about science mainly introduce knowledge originated in the 19th century like electricity and light. Some books about frontier science are hard to understand, because they use scientific terms.

"Children are curious about everything. I want to impart knowledge about the latest science and technology to them in an easy way," he says.

"I hope that they will realize that the things scientists are doing are both valuable and interesting. It's like planting a seed in their heart, and they may also want to be a scientist when they grow up."