2020–2021 — 40 Book adaptations and distribution
Room to Read worked with a local partner, The Queen Rania Foundation, to adapt 40 children’s books from Room to Read’s international collection into Arabic for distribution in Jordan.
During the restrictions of COVID-19, the workshops and technical support happened virtually. As a result, we were able to engage the Jordanian Ministry of Education in the selection of the 40 titles that would be adapted from Room to Read’s collection and complete an Ideal Book Collection workshop and study. This study identified gaps in Jordan’s children’s book market, which helped to guide the ongoing development of an ideal book collection.
With the 40 selected titles, Room to Read conducted an adaptation workshop in which authors, illustrators and book creators translated books from English into Arabic. The books went through a strict approval process, were printed in sets of 6,500 — 260,000 books in total — and finally distributed across all 3,000 public schools in Jordan.
These 40 titles can be found on Room to Read’s digital library, Literacy Cloud, here.
Additionally, Room to Read produced video read alouds of several adapted titles. These videos are also available on Literacy Cloud, here.
