Portland children’s media company A Kids Company About released a free book download called “A Kids Book About War” to help families talk about what children are seeing on the news and the questions they have.
The book, which was written and produced in less than a week, is authored by journalist Sarah Jones, an Emmy-award winner who has reported on conflict zones. The digital book is free and people can make a donation with 100% of proceeds going to Unicef, War Child and Doctors Without Borders.
Jones connected with the company after CEO Jelani Memory put a call out on Twitter on who should author such a book.
“Sarah has all kinds of experience reporting (on) conflict and crisis zones, often interviewing families and kids. We knew that she would give the book a well-rounded perspective on the topic, and it was clear she had to be the one to write the book,” he said.
A Kids Company About specializes in producing media for children that takes on hard and important topics. It started with books and has grown to include podcasts and videos. In March 2020 the company put out another free digital book that was focused on Covid-19 and was written by a social epidemiologist and assistant scientist in the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In the intro for “A Kids Book About War,” Jones wrote that the book is meant to create space for conversation between children and adults on a complex topic that unfortunately will remain relevant.
“This book also creates space to think critically about what starts wars and why they keep happening, and what we can learn from our past to create a better future,” she wrote.
Like other books from the company, this one uses simple language and sentence structure as well as design to get points across and open space for questions and discussion.
“Right now, kids have lots of questions about what's going in Ukraine, and we wanted to create a resource for parents to help kids understand from a high level that war is essentially about the struggle for power,” Memory said. “And it has a massive impact on everyone involved. But we also felt it was important to make this book non-specific because wars happen in lots of different places and involve many different kinds of people.”
Other topics handled by the company include: racism, depression, anxiety and belonging. The company’s products are based on the belief that children are confronted with these topics from their peers, social media and elsewhere in our connected world whether they are prepared or not. A Kids Company About wants to help families with that preparation.
