Simon & Schuster Canada and Save the Children have teamed up to deliver 10,000 copies of the 2021 book Sleep, My Baby, translated into Ukrainian, to help out.
A prominent publisher and a non-government organization have teamed up to send Ukrainians a book based on a Canadian woman’s lullaby for her children, in an effort to rally the embattled people’s spirits during the war with Russia.
Simon & Schuster Canada and Save the Children are delivering 10,000 copies of the 2021 book, Sleep, My Baby, translated into Ukrainian, to families in Ukraine, to refugees in Poland and other countries in the region, and to some community members living in Canada. There is also an animated version of the story, with the text sung in English and Ukrainian, aimed at streaming platforms.
Simon & Schuster Canada has covered the cost of translating and producing the copies of the book – written by Lena Allen-Shore, now deceased, and her son, Jacques Shore – and is overseeing the distribution of the Ukrainian version.
Danny Glenwright, the president and chief executive officer of Save the Children, said the logistics to distribute the book to families in the Ukraine are underway.
“In the coming months, we are excited to hear back from Save the Children’s program teams in Ukraine about the response, particularly how children and parents are engaging with the story,” Mr. Glenwright said in a statement.
Yuliya Kovaliv, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, has provided a forward for the Ukrainian version of the book.
“This sweet book by Dr. Lena Allen-Shore shares every mother’s universal bedtime message to her child. May the words and the melody of the lullaby ascend to the stars above as prayers for peace and the protection of our loved ones – and our people,” she wrote.
The book, illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle, features mothers comforting their children and putting them to sleep at bedtime.
“In Rome, in Warsaw, in Calcutta, in Paris and New York, each mother is singing a lullaby as old, as old as the world. Sleep, my baby, my lovely baby. I wish you good night,” the text says.
These words are impressed into the mind of Mr. Shore, an Ottawa-based lawyer who was raised in Montreal. In an interview, he said he could not remember life without the phrases of the book. They have also been part of the lives of his older brother, their children and grandchildren in the family.
“Everybody in our family, in our extended family knew the song, Sleep, My Baby. It was a lullaby that every one of us would basically share with our kids before they went to sleep,” he said.
Mr. Shore noted that his mother wrote the lullaby for him when he was born in 1956. Ms. Allen-Shore was born in Poland, survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Canada in 1951. She died in 2018 at 97.
In his mother’s final year, Mr. Shore thought of turning the lullaby into a children’s book and presented the idea to Simon & Schuster Canada.
“My mother never saw the book. She passed away knowing the book was going to come out,” he said.
No revenues or profits from the book have ever gone to the Shore family. They have instead gone into a fund set up in Ms. Allen-Shore’s name at Gratz College in Philadelphia, where she was a professor for 40 years, to assemble and catalogue papers from her career and continue studies on the Holocaust.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, Mr. Shore said he thought of September, 1939, when his mother was 17 years old and the Second World War started. And he thought of efforts to help Ukrainians.
Kevin Hanson, Simon & Schuster Canada’s president and publisher, said in a statement to The Globe that he and Mr. Shore were talking about the war and how they might be able to make a small contribution.
“For my part, I grew up in rural Alberta, with many Ukrainian neighbours and friends – even my adopted brother is of Ukrainian descent,” Mr. Hanson said.
“Translating Sleep, My Baby into Ukrainian might provide some comfort, we felt, to the young families who were displaced at the outset of the war.”
Mr. Shore said he hoped more copies of the book could be produced for distribution. In a statement, Simon & Schuster Canada said future prints of the translated version would depend on revenues from sales of the English-language edition.
Ian Bailey