8-Year-Old Girl Publishes Comic Book To Help Kids 'Get Safe From The Coronavirus'

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - An 8-year-old Iraqi girl took advantage of her time in the pandemic lockdown to write a comic book to raise awareness about COVID-19 among children.

When Manar Alkamil wrote about how the pandemic affected her life, her mother thought the writings could be made into a book. The project developed into what is now published under the title "Get Safe From The Coronavirus."

"[I] wrote this story, first in one of my notebooks in a pencil and an eras[er], a pencil and a page," she told Reuters. "I was writing and I chose the pictures on my mom's phone. I chose them so she could draw and color them."

Alkamil wrote the book in Iraq, but the first 85 copies were printed and distributed to friends and relatives in the United States, where Alkamil lived until June 2019.

"Writing this book was 100 percent Manar's writing, her style but for the medical information, her grandfather, aunt and uncle -- who are doctors -- helped her to have the right medical information," says Alkamil's father, Ithar Hesham.

In Iraq, a local publishing house supported the young writer's talents and will help her family in publishing more than 500 copies of the book free of charge, half of them in English and half in Arabic.

"The book is important at this time and when we saw its human influence on all children, especially at this current time, we took responsibility of printing and publishing it with her father," says Abdul Mahdi al-Ameri, who heads Ghadir Publishing House.

The books will be distributed in libraries in Basra and the school where Manar studies.

"I made this book so that children know how to protect themselves from this ugly coronavirus," she says. "In the book, there are comics and many other things about this coronavirus."

As of April 6, Iraq has recorded a total of 880,000 COVID-19 cases with 14,502 deaths caused by the virus.