Walls of Protection: Roxy Learns About the COVID-19 Pandemic

A college undergraduate student from Emory University and her pediatrician mother saw this challenge as an excellent opportunity to combine their talents. The student, a probable double major in English and either Biology or NBB on the pre-med track saw this opportunity as a combination of her passions. Her mother, saw it as an opportunity to work with her daughter to write about an issue that she's also passionate about and dealing with in her office on the daily. Neither an expert in illustrations, they also sought out the help of a friend: a university undergraduate student from Lehigh University. Yet, the challenge still remained as during her finals season she only had time to illustrate the cover. This challenge was overcome by modeling the pictures after the mother and her daughter, and utilizing photoshop's draw tool to create beautiful drawings of the two as the models for Roxy and her mom. Another challenge was combining styles of writing, and learning more about the age group and how children's books are composed. We researched the age group, and read the materials provided on how these children are beginning to become less self-centered and more empathetic, which we intended to incorporate with Roxy's clear concern about others and her grandparents throughout the story. In addition, a challenge came in cutting down the story so that it could fit a child of this age groups' attention span. We ended up reading it multiple times to friends of ours with children around this age group in order to figure out the appropriate length.