The English version of the book A Special Spring Festival features a child wearing a protective mask on the cover.

April 2 was the 54th International Children's Book Day. On this day of this special year, a reading platform initiated by the Chinese children's book publishing industry was officially launched globally. The platform, Lifetreebooks.org.cn, aims at providing a place for children all around the world to read books and fight against the COVID-19 epidemic.

The website showcases Chinese children's books on fighting against COVID-19, which are available in more than a dozen languages and free to hundreds of millions of children. Since its launch in early April, the website has attracted nearly 20,000 visitors from 53 countries.

Zhang Mingzhou is president of the IBBY

Zhang Mingzhou, president of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) sent a solicitation letter in his own name on Feb 29, asking publishers to donate international copyrights and translators to translate the books for free. In just one month, Zhang received copyright donations of copyright from more than 50 publishing houses and authors, and more than 300 translators in a dozen languages signed up. They translated and publicized the works to help overcome the disease.

“I believe that the goodwill of the Chinese people is huge, and I am particularly touched by people’s kindness,” Zhang said.

To help children relieve their anxiety, Chinese publishers have been publishing picture books, poems and other publications.

“In the face of the epidemic, there is no way for foreign countries to know us, but there is a way for us to let them know us. And it is our duty,” Zhang said. On Feb 29, he launched the global children's book translating and reading project.

The Japanese version of the book Waiting for Daddy

More than 300 publishers, editors, authors, translators, artists, experts, designers and web technicians worked together to produce the project.

It received a total of 60 works donated, including A Brief History of Viruses Written for Children (colored picture books) and Waiting for Daddy, donated by Changjiang Children's Publishing Group. The group, which was in Wuhan, planned a series of related topics about overcoming many difficulties.

“This is also our initial intention and mission as Hubei children's publishers, and when we communicated with the book authors, they all agreed to donate the copyright proposal without hesitation,” said He Long, CEO of the group.

Eleven children's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Korean and Italian.

“Publishers from countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan and Mongolia have expressed their desire to translate these children's books into Malay, Urdu, Mongolian and so on,” Zhang said.

In addition, Over Drive, the world's largest library content provider, will put the books in 45,000 of its libraries in 78 countries and make them available for free to readers around the world.