Poster for short animation Mother. Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn

Ali: Mother

Hot celebrity moms

With Mother's Day approaching, a short animation entitled Mother, telling a story of a red cartoon fox popular in China, and his mother, became available online on May 9.

Mother is the second of a planned seven episodes of an animation series about the fox named Ali. The six-minute-long animation is based on a story from Xu Han's first picture book, Ali And The Dream Castle, and features Ali's dialogue with his mother about love and death.

Xu's three picture books about the red fox have sold more than 1.5 million copies in the past several years. Ali, together with Hello Kitty and Minnie Mouse, has been nominated for the 2014 Licensing Excellence Awards for the second year.

According to the Beijing Dream Castle Culture Company, the first episode of the Ali animation series has received more than 2 million hits on China’s major online video websites within one month of being released in March.