The book I translated arrived while I was having a trip with my family I haven't met for three years 😌.
Too bad I didn't have a chance to touch these beautiful books and flip through their pages, but my sister kindly took the pictures of them for me while my mom read the book out loud during our video call.
The Day War Came is a heart-broken story with a beautiful ending. I can't tell how many times I cried while reading and translating this book. Just before this project started, a terrible truth about what happened to Rohingya refugees that passed through Thailand had been revealed in the parliament. The refugee crisis had been a long debate in the country even before that, and yet when a picture book about refugees (The Journey) was translated into Thai in 2019, many people still thought that it was a far-off topic for families and children.
As a book reviewer, I have always tried to emphasise the importance of children's books with social issues. And I could never be more grateful that the publisher decided to buy the right of this book and invited me to be part of the project.
There are still so many underrepresented stories to be told. I just hope that one day children's books and the stories of children from Thailand will get to fly across borders to the world out there.