My three-year-old son still thinks the Novel Coronavirus is something he can defeat with a solid dropkick. (Oh, how I wish that were true, buddy!) But as cute as he is, his confusion about COVID-19 and quarantine best practices has created some real problems. And I know parents of younger kids are not alone here. So I was happy to discover this wonderful downloadable kid’s comic about Coronavirus and quarantine, available to download and print for free. Whoo!
Oh…and it’s short. Which is great for both of us.
In The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus, Authors Shanon Hale and Dean Hale with illustrator LeUyen Pham are using their popular children’s book heroine, The Princess in Black, to explain some of this hard stuff to kids in very simple, basic, and kind of fun terms.
Princess Black describes that monster we’re trying to fight is too small to see. then goes through the steps we all should take to fight it.
The kid-friendly analogies are wonderful — like  staying “one Frimplepants” away from friends. (She’s a unicorn who’s roughly six feet long.) Or canceling playdates, in favor of hanging out with your imaginary friends, like Sir Hogswell the Pig.
I’m hoping this resource will those kids who are starting to get restless, even as they see other kids who might not be practicing social distancing as consciously as your family is.
And personally, I hope it will help me next time my son runs out to hug the neighbor or asks why we’re not going to school today — again.
Plus, it’s only four pages, which even this working-from-home-while-quarantined-mama can manage at bedtime. Probably.
