A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:

My guest on this episode is Eva Lou a writer and publisher and the founder of Madeleine Editions, a multi-lingual children's book publishing company, that offers books in English, French and Mandarin Chinese. Madeleine Editions published Monster Dance, a children's book created to help children deal with and understand the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. For every copy of Monster Dance sold, a donation will be made to Donate PPE.

Eva spoke with me about the uniqueness of what Madeleine Editions is doing with their digital books, which are a multisensory experience, that combines animation, and the beauty of the spoken word and music. She shared a particularly memorable story that involved the recording of music for the book, The Little Baby Airplane.

We also spoke about her personal writing projects and her perspectives on what It takes to be a writer.

Here's a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

How Madeleine Editions got involved in publishing the children's book, Monster Dance
What it took to get Monster Dancepublished so quickly and in a timely fashion
What inspired Eva to start Madeleine Editions
How Madeleine Editions publishes multi-lingual books in three languages: Chinese, English and French
The Taste of a Strawberry, the first book that led to the creation of Madeleine Editions'
How Madeleine Editions' books combine animation, the spoken word and music
How Madeleine Editions collaborated with Deutsche Grammophon:
How 3-7 years of age is a critical time for children to be exposed languages
How Taiwanese supermodel Chiling Lin (林志玲) got involved as the Chinese narrator for Monster Dance
How Eva's personal background set her on the path to run a multi-lingual publishing house
How Eva relates differently she when speaks English, Mandarin Chinese and French
Eva's connection to Taiwan
The many different languages spoken in Eva's household
The joys and challenges of running Madeleine Editions
What it was like working with illustrator Guy Gilchrist
One of the highlights of her work with Madeleine Editions involved the recording of music for the book, The Little Baby Airplane
The uniqueness of what Madeline Editions does as a multilingual children's book publisher
How Madeleine Editions' books can expose children to other nonnative languages
The musicality of language
Eva's career as a writer
The novel that Eva has been working on that is related to Taiwan
Madeleine Editions' plans to adapt The Little Princefor children 3-7 years of age
The series of essays that Eva is working on about homes vs. houses
Eva's writing routine
The difference between a career in publishing vs. being a writer
Eva's perspective on being a writer and what it takes to be a writer