Asian Festival of Children's Content

Some news sent to me by Singapore's Book Development Council which will interest those of you interested in writing for children.  :

Over 400 international authors, publishers, distributors, institutional buyers, literary agents and multimedia producers of children’s content will gather in Singapore for the inaugural Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) from 6 - 9 May 2010. To be held at The Arts House, this is possibly the first festival of its kind in the world to focus on Asian children’s content.

The organisers, The Arts House and National Book Development Council of Singapore hope the festival will give a boost to the creation, production and publication of children’s materials with Asian content in all formats. The meeting of international industry players is also aimed at improving the distribution and access of Asian content to children worldwide.

The global children’s content business, which includes books, games, films and music, is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The festival’s advisory board chairperson Claire Chiang said: “To date, we’ve had easy access to and benefited from a wide selection of education and entertainment content from the West. Asian materials, even those available, are seldom translated and promoted, and are therefore left unexplored. It’s a big loss for children worldwide, and an untapped industry with tremendous potential.”

Ms Chiang, an author, a community advocate and businesswoman, added: “We believe this meeting will help to kick start the growth and internationalisation of Asian children’s content. Hopefully within a decade, Asia will be able to boast literary and visual works of global impact for children, like those produced by JK Rowling, Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton.”

Also speaking on the event, R. Ramachandran, Executive Director of NBDCS and Festival Director of AFCC, said: “The festival is possibly the first event of this nature in the world, and a great platform for Asian writers and content producers to meet and find ways to extend their reach, so that their creative works will find bigger audiences in the region and the rest of the world.”

Phan Ming Yen, Assistant General Manager of The Arts House, added: “Developing and showcasing Asian creativity, arts and culture has been one of the core focuses of The Arts House since its founding. This has been evident through its involvement in events such as the Singapore Writers Festival and Asia on the Edge.

“The inaugural Asian Festival of Children’s Content marks a significant milestone for us. We believe it will raise the awareness of Asia’s rich cultural resources for children. Through the festival, we hope to widen the boundaries of access to these resources so that the rest of the world can enjoy them as well.”

Apart from providing a platform for children’s content industry players to network, the festival will also host established and emerging writers and content producers such as Singapore authors Jessie Wee and Emily Lim, the Philippines’ Karina Bolasco, publisher of Anvil Publishing, Malaysia’s Teri Tan, international correspondent for New York–based magazine Publishers Weekly, Risuan Aramcharoen, President of The Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand, Taiwan’s Irene Chen, a children's literature critic and writer, Hong Kong-based Nury Vittachi, a best-selling author, Kathleen Ahrens, the International Regional Advisor Chair for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Misako Ohnuki, the Director of Culture Division, Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO, and illustrator and translator, Naomi Kojima from Japan.

Other speakers include India’s award-winning writers Paro Anand and Anushka Ravishankar (‘India’s Dr. Seuss’), and illustrator Atanu Roy, Christopher Cheng, 2009 winner of the Lady Cutler Award for services to children's literature, and award-winning young adult novelist Ken Spillman from Australia, Jeff Yang, founder and publisher of the Asian American periodical aMagazine, from the US, award-winning author Rukhsana Khan from Canada, Greg Childs, media consultant and former BBC Children’s director and producer, from the UK, Nathalie Beau, a pioneer of children’s bookshops in France and a founder of the country’s Children’s Booksellers Association, and Suresh Seetharaman, co-founder of Virgin Comics LLC.

At the event, the speakers and participants will engage in discussion and debate on a broad range of issues, including exporting Asian content to the world, challenges and opportunities in publishing for children in Asia, ways to profit from the emerging world of multimedia content, marketing and reaching out to media-savvy children, the emerging role of literary agents in Asia, digital rights and e-publishing, and copyright issues in the world of online content.

The public will have the opportunity to participate in the festival as well. There will be a forum for teachers and parents to discuss the latest trends in child education, motivation, enrichment and entertainment programmes.

During the festival, the organisers will also launch the inaugural Singapore Children’s Book Prize called Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award. The prize money is S$10,000 and will be shared by the writer and illustrator. Entries for the prize will be judged on criteria such as originality, creativity, appropriateness of Asian content to context of story, impact of Asian content to young readers, use of language, and entertainment value.

If you are interested, you will find more information and registration forms here.  I shall be going down, at least for one of the days, to moderate one of the panels.

Caterpillar Munches its Way to Top of the List

As part of World Book Day on Thursday 4,000 parents with children aged 2-1 were surveyed to find out the UK's best children's story writers, The Telegraph reports.  

 The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle was voted the best bedtime story :

First published in 1969, it is now available in 47 languages and still sells one copy every minute around the world.

Arts editor Sarah Crompton writes :

It is the simplicity of the conception that makes it such a hit: a book a small child can hold, a hole in the page, and the colourful glory of Carle’s illustrations, at once simple and yet gratifyingly detailed. There is nothing to it, yet it is a classic learning story, a brilliant starting point for a conversation between parent and child. You can point out the scenery as you read, discuss the tastes of the different foods, talk about the cleverness of nature and the way those chubby caterpillars grow up into butterflies who live only for a day.

It was followed on the list by :

2. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

3. BFG - Roald Dahl

4. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

5. The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson

6. Famous Five - Enid Blyton

7. Matilda - Roald Dahl

8. The Tales of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter

9. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

10. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

11. Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

12. Mr Men - Roger Hargreaves

13. The Witches- Roald Dahl

14. The Twits - Roald Dahl

15. James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl

16. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

17. The Cat in the Hat - Dr Seuss

18. Hans Christian Fairy Tales - H.C. Andersen

19. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K.Rowling

20. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

The survey also turned up the interesting fact that three-quarters of the parents surveyed read to their kids.

Ah nostalgia - I remember my dad reading Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, and The Secret Garden to me.  Quite a number of these books weren't written when I was a kid, but thankfully we never grow up too much to enjoy them!

Now then, those of you with kids to read to, which stories have gone down the best, and which do you remember your parents reading to you?

The Stories Behind the Stories

Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

Stacy Conradt celebrates what would have been Dr. Seuss’s 105th birthday by telling the fascinating stories behind 10 of his most famous books. Green Eggs and Ham - though not a halal choice for some of you - is my favourite of the ones I've read.

Malaysia's Answer to Harry Potter?

Demand has been so hot for this local series that Popular Bookstores now takes up to 500 copies of its new releases, as opposed to its usual practice of ordering a maximum of 10 copies per title for each outlet....The first batch ordered always exceeds 4,500 copies, and all will be sold within a month. ... To date, the first book titled Seven Days has sold more than 30,000 copies since its release in 2006 – even at the relatively high price of RM20 per copy. ... The success of the series has stunned everyone from writers and editors to publishers, all of whom thought books with 80,000 to 100,000 characters sprawled over 300 pages without illustrations would never get the attention of young readers.

It was so nice to read about the runaway success of a local Chinese children's author, Khor Ewe Pin, in a piece by Yip Yoke Teng in today's Starmag. This teacher and textbook writers says that he noticed that there seemed to be a literary void for older children reading in Chinese. He studied how Rowling's novels were written ... and it seems that some of the magic dust rubbed off on him too.

Rebecca for Readings Too!

Oops! One of my readers I accidentally left off my list for tomorrow's Readings@Seksan's is children's author, Rebecca Loke who will be introducing us to her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy.

The book was inspired by Rebecca's son, Ethan, who has alopecia universalis - a condition which leads to the loss of hair, not only on the head but all over the body, including the eyebrows and the eyelashes.

As Rebecca notes on the book cover, there is meagre understanding of the condition in the community at large. She says in the foreword :

At times when Ethan goes out without covering his head, people stare at him. Some even do a double-take. Some tease and call him botak-head. Others assume he has cancewre and offer words of comfort. A few people have asked 'What did you do to make your head so smooth?'

Hopefully the story about an 8 year old called James will make folks more aware of the issues. The book is the first in a planned series called Children’s Concerns.

Rebecca and her son were featured in The Straits Times of Singapore last month, and you can read the piece here.

The Horror! The Horror!

... the deeper you venture into the dark woods of these fairytales, the more you have to wonder – are these stories really for kids?

All this week The Guardian celebrates the fairytale. Old stories are retold by modern authors who also discuss the contemporary resonances. The related articles (which you can find here) include Adam Barnett (quoted above) who looks at the horror and violence the stories contain; Alison Lurie talking about wisdom and folly in fairytales, and Adam Phillips looking at the concept of quests in fairytales.

Well Phew!

The accusation that J.K. Rowling plagiarised an earlier children's book Adrian Jacob's Willie The Wizard seems to have been laid to rest by publisher Bloomsbury. Hands up who thinks it is a cheap publicity stunt.

Wonder if the trustees of Enid Blyton's estate will also be suing, after all jolly japes in a boarding school, magic or not, is so Mallory Towers?

Stories for Modern Kids

A friend passed on a passed on passed on e-mail with these images and more. I've tried to track down where they originated from - but have failed. So just enjoy these updated children's classics.

History for Kids

Daphne Lee writes about history books for kids with a local flavour in her Tots to Teens Column in Starmag today.

She writes about Tunku Halim's A Children’s History of Malaysia (which he was kind enough to give me a copy of some time back)and goes on to review his new book The History of Malaysia: A Children’s Encyclopedia which she says she would :

... highly recommend ... to parents, teachers, and librarians as a marvellous reference and teaching tool.

Halim is also profiled in New Man this month*. (Click up to size to view.)


(*Thanks Shirley for sending this to me.)

Postscript :

I must say thanks to Halim for whizzing me a copy of the book within a few hours of blogging this. It is a very handsome book, and since I failed the quizzes at the back of it, I clearly have much to learn!

I like the way the book is written at just the right level for younger readers and could see it being very useful in the classroom (at least in English lessons). And I was intrigued by the non-linear, thematic organisation.

A job well done, Hal!

A Writer in Residence ... Inside Your Computer

Novels, even short stories, eat ideas like forest fires eat trees. If you’re setting out on an epic novel with just one idea, you’re probably going to peter out. What I do is take an idea that interests me, that I can feel an emotional response to, and then chuck it into my head to stew for a day or a week or a year, and then see if another idea sticks to it.

Author Patrick Ness will be offering regular advice to the wannabe-publisheds [via] in his new role as writer-in-residence for the UK organisation Booktrust. (This could be the first time that the such a residence has an online address rather than a location in the location in the physical world - and that's great because we can all get to share!).

Ness is the winner of both the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize with The Knife of Never Letting Go, described as a very contemporary coming-of-age story.

Revealing Fatimah's Secrets

... it was my experience of Maznoor and her family, and all the stories she told me (of her childhood, of her family, of her various houses and kampungs), that gave me the format for Fatimah’s Kampung ... A million little details eventually, and very slowly, came together: trips with Maznoor in Borneo forests and on the back roads around Selangor and Perak; visits to family graves; walks with my Batu Pahat brother-in-law into the forest of Gunung Soga and around Johor kampungs; explorations of building sites with my little niece Hanna; a visit to a keramat, a family wedding, my sister-in-law’s kitchen garden. Eventually, I found that I was celebrating Maznoor’s family, celebrating all I loved about Malaysia, and paraphrasing my old lectures in a more presentable way, all at the same time.

Fatimah's Kampung author, Iain Buchanan, is interviewed by Daphne Lee in Starmag today and also talks about how the book was created. You realise just what an incredible project and painstaking labour of love the book was.

Buchanan's Maznoor wife sums it all up beautifully :

We have no children but Fatimah’s Kampung is a deep and touching tribute to a loving life together. It took eight years to see the light of day but it will last to the end of our days and beyond.

Fatimah Goes to Penang

Something for the literati in Penang.

From Daphne :

Fatimah's Kampung will be launched on March 4 at 9am at the Balai Persiban Agung, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. The book will be launched by the universiti's vice chancellor, YB. Prof. Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak. Arndt Graf, associate professor of USM's school of humanities, and Daphne Lee, Star Publication's children's literature columnist, will review the book, and Iain Buchanan, the author and illustrator and writer of Fatimah's Kampung, will discuss his work at the launch. The event will conclude with a book signing by the author/illustrator.

Saturday Events

Yesterday afternoon presented tough choices - two events I wanted to go to on at the same time.

I plumped for Shih-Li's launch of Ripples at Silverfish. Shih-Li read the title story which is one of my favourites in the book, and fielded questions from her audience - most of them wanting to know about how she writes ("In bits and pieces, here and there.") and where her ideas come from.

(I've managed to nab her for Readings at Seksan's on Saturday, which I am very happy about.)

Gwen filled me in on the event I missed, which I thank her for :

I was lucky to be one of those who were at Kinokuniya KLCC yesterday to hear Oliver Jeffers talk about his books.

He had a lot of fascinating material to show us how he worked.

He showed how he made his collage for backgrounds and how he used the concept of light source in the portrayal of characters and scenes.

The corner where he was giving his presentation was overflowing and inadequate to allow all the people who came to see and hear what he had to show and say.

I bought a copy of How To Catch a Star for my grandchildren and there was an impressive line of people waiting to get their purchases signed. The signature is a personal one with a tiny sketch as well.

We need more visitors like Oliver Jeffers here in KL. There is a growing group of people interested in producing good books for children.

Jeffers' Paper Caper at Kino

Here's news of another literary event you might like to attend this Saturday. Artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers will be at Kinokuniya Bookshop on Saturday 21 February from 4.00 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. to talk about his work.

Some information about Jeffers from contemporarywriters.com :

Oliver Jeffers was born in Western Australia in 1977, and brought up in Belfast. He is an artist who began by exhibiting his work at several small exhibitions in Belfast from 1995-1998, before beginning to illustrate book jackets for local publishing houses. He graduated from the University of Ulster with a degree in Visual Communications in 2001. From 1999 to 2000, he travelled to Australia and the US, settling in Sydney and becoming a freelance illustrator and painter, working for various magazines, and illustrating for the Lavazza Coffee Company.

The first picture book he wrote and illustrated was How To Catch A Star (2004), which was shortlisted for the 2004 Booktrust Early Years Award (Best New Illustrator). Lost and Found (2005) won the 2005 Nestlé Children's Book Prize (Gold Award) in 2005, the 2006 Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. The Incredible Book Eating Boy (2006), was shortlisted for the 2007 British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. Oliver Jeffers continues to exhibit his work in London, Ireland, Australia and the US, and has undertaken illustration commissions for various organisations, including Starbuck's, Orange, and Sony PSP. He is also a co-founder of the art collaborative, OAR.

His latest book is The Great Paper Caper (2008).

Lansell Looking for Illustrator

Are there any wanna be illustrators of children's books out there? Lansell Taudevin (left), an Australian author living in Malaysia, would like to find :

... aspiring/ brilliant/ talented/ (cheap) illustrators who might be interested in illustrating some children's books with a Malay theme??? The books are geared to 9-11 year olds, 3000 words, each book has about 40 pages with illustrations on at least every second page. What are they about? Maybe citing the 'intro' might give a clue. THE RAJA RAJAWALI BOOKS In days when dragons flew and every day was magic, a peaceful and prosperous Malay Sultanate held sway on the beautiful island of Sukahati in the Straits of Melaka. In those days there were many small Malay sultanates in South East Asia. Most were ruled by Sultans, but Sukahati, being one of the smallest, was ruled by a Raja. The Raja of the Sultanate of Sukahati had a grand title: Yang di-Pertuan Agong Raja Rashid Abdullah Johari Ahmad Wuji Adil Luqman Ibrahim. His people called him Raja Rajawali. Raja Rajawali was a noble and brave Sultan, even if he was sometimes a little bit of a bumbler. Most importantly, his people loved him, and when he was needed, he was always there to protect them. Follow the adventures of Raja Rajawali, Princess Sinara, the beautiful princess who loved Raja Rajawali, Garuda, Raja Rajawali’s cantankerous royal elephant, Bengis Khan, a troublesome nobleman, and many many more wonderful characters in the Raja Rajawali books. I had a few similar books published in Oz some years ago and had a brilliant illustrator. He is keen to do these, but I would prefer someone with an understanding of 'being Malay' - silat, songket, malay courts etc.... Cheers Lansell

So if there is anyone out there who is interested please let me know (either in the comments below or by email sharonbakar at yahoo dot com, or via Facebook) and I will pass the info on to Lansell. And I know at least one other writer looking for the same ... Incidentally, you can find this article by Lansell in MPH's current Quill magazine.

When Fatimah Lost her Kampung

A few days ago I wrote about the launch of a children's book called Fatimah's Kampung by Iain Buchanan at Badan Warisan. I ended up being pretty late because I had decided to walk to Jalan Stonor from KLCC, along what I thought was a familiar route. I ended up getting lost, completely thrown by the way the area has changed since I was last there, with huge high-rises and building sites beginning to dominate this formerly green and peaceful enclave with its colonial bungalows.

I realise now, after reading the book, that there's a certain irony to all this - for Fatimah's Kampong is the story about how a landscape changes as the city encroaches, and how what is best about a place will be sacrificed to commercial interest.

In the introduction to the book Buchanan talks about how the book came to be written. He says he came to Malaysia first to teach shortly after Independence and that he took away with him a memory of the landscape which became part of him.

He continued to teach geography in a university in the East Midlands, and one day he had a call from one of his former students, Maznoor, now a college lecturer herself, coming to the UK to do a diploma in TEFL. They later married and Buchanan found himself part of a :

... large, lively, and very loving Malaysian family ..

But revisiting the landscape he had fallen in love with, he found that there was good reason to mourn :

... there was painted concrete, dead laterite and a gaudy brittle sameness ...

After taking early retirement, and wanting to communicate the ideas that he has lectured on in a way that was more vivid and exciting to young people, he began work on Fatimah's Kampung, a labour of love which took him eight years to complete, while Maznoor went out to work in a British factory to pay the bills. It was a true labour of love.

The book tells the story of a girl growing up in Kampong Hidayah. The family home was built by her great-grandfather with materials taken from the forest. When most of the other kampungs disappeared because of the expansion of the city it was allowed to remain untouched by the Sultan who owned the land.

Fatimah grows up amidst fruit trees, and forest (where she believes Pak Belang the tiger still might be hiding), and near to the frangipani filled graveyard where her relatives were laid to rest, and the keramat once home to a holy man who knew the ways of the forest in the way no others did.

The rhythms of kampong life of are recorded - her grandmother gathering herbs to cure ailments, the children's games, the visits by hawkers, Ramadan and the bustle of Hari Raya at the end of it, the monsoon floods.

But then the bulldozers move in and Fatimah and her family are forced to relocate to a high rise near by where they can see the final destruction of their kampung, and the forest around it.

There is one small mercy - the kampong house itself is to be saved and taken to be part of a new theme park which Fatimah gets the chance to visit.

Labelling books can sometimes do them a disservice, and whilst the book will undoubtedly appeal to older children (many of whom may have lived the story!), it will strike a chord with every Malaysian who cares about the environment and heritage, regardless of age, and will probably travel very well beyond these shores as the issues it raises are universal ones. I'm not ashamed to say that the story moved me to tears - especially the part where Fatimah finally does come face to face with her tiger.

But it is the stunning illustrations, with every detail of tree and leaf and kampung lovingly recorded, which make this book an absolute joy to own. (I have had to pries my copy out of the hands of visitors to the house who haven't wanted to put it down and talk to me!)

I wonder if Fatimah's Kampung might not be better described as a graphic novel and one that could easily become a classic of the genre?

The book is published by the Consumers Association of Penang, and this surprises on two counts. First of all, the organisation is known for its pamphlets on consumer and environmental issues and they have not, to my knowledge, ever undertaken a project like this before. Secondly, that they have made such a great job of it - this is a beautifully produced book that you could put beside any produced overseas and feel proud of.

Have I raved? Sorry. But I sincerely mean every word of praise I have heaped on this book.

But why not see for yourself? Iain will be appearing at Readings@Seksan this coming Saturday and a limited number of his books will be on sale.

Self-Evident Truths About Reading

Without the sunshine of literature children cannot grow as they should. We know that from books come knowledge and understanding, that they are a source of infinite joy and fun, that they stimulate imagination and creativity, that they open eyes and minds and hearts. It is through the power and music and magic of stories and poems that children can expand their own intellectual curiosity, develop the empathy and awareness that they will need to tackle the complexities of their own emotions, of the human condition in which they find themselves. And it's through books that we can learn the mastery of words, the essential skill that will enable us to express ourselves well enough to achieve our potential in the classroom and beyond.

This is of course, self-evident, says children's author Michael Morpurgo in The Times yet a high proportion of children in British schools are functionally illiterate. He suggests that the best way to bring up standards is through helping children to enjoy literature :

Give the children the books early, give them the love of books early. Let the spelling and the punctuation and the comprehension, important though they are, let them come later, and be taught in such a way that all the wonder and the magic and the fun are not lost in the process.

And of course I post this hoping that the same message will get through to teachers and educational planners here, where even more kids leave school subliterate. Say the same thing often enough ...

Also in The Times, Amanda Craig has tips on finding the right books for your child.

The Return of Pooh

Eighty years on, Winnie the Pooh will be returning to Hundred Acre Wood in a sequel to be written by David Benedictus and illustrated by Mark Burgess. The book will be launched in October ... just in time to be a Christmas hit.

I am a great Pooh fan but he wasn't actually part of my childhood since I only discovered him from (less deprived!) friends at secondary school, but even at that advanced age, I was delighted by the books. And especially loved this poem :

The more it snows - tiddly pom
The more it snows - tiddly pom
The more it goes - tiddly pom
The more it goes - tiddly pom
On snowing

And nobody knows - tiddly pom
And nobody knows - tiddly pom
How cold my toes - tiddly pom
How cold my toes - tiddly pom
Are growing.

I was (and am) a simple soul!

Visiting Fatimah's Kampung

Something for Daphne Lee to cheer about!

Author and illustrator Iain Buchanan will be at Badan Warisan Malaysia this Saturday (17th) at 11.00 a.m. to talk about the creation of his new children's book Fatimah's Kampung.

Learn about his labour of love and grab this opportunity to see some of the large scale original art works that went into the making of this book.

This Malaysian Edition is published by the Consumers' Association of Penang and is available for purchase at Badan Warisan's Gift Shop. The book retails at RM65 per copy (paperback version).

Buchanan says about the book :

I needed to give my nieces and nephews, and their children, a picture of how wonderful the world can be - and a warning of how barren we can let it become; I needed to do this in a way which young and old could share, which would appeal to reason - and which would touch the heart as well.

So I set out to rescue, from those twenty years of lectures, a picture book for children about the life and death of a landscape. I wanted to tell the story of a forest, a village, and a city, and the succession from one to the other. I wanted to capture the drama of the change, what it meant to the landscape and the people who lived in it; and I wanted to do this in a way that could celebrate the detail of life, its different scales, textures, colours - from the broad panorama of a forest or a city skyline, to the minutiae of things, like the fretwork on a balcony or the ants on a leaf. A book like this, I reckoned, would do all I needed to do: it would celebrate the joys that Malaysia had given me.

Badan Warisan Malaysia is at No 2 Jalan Stonor, 50450 Kuala Lumpur.

To register, please call Yuana at the Secretariat, tel: 03 - 2144 9273 or e-mail: heritage@badanwarisan.org.my

Incidentally, Iain Buchanan will be appearing at this month's readings@seksan on 31st January. (More details later.)

Children's Books with a Malaysian Flavour?

Daphne Lee in today's Starmag highlights the dearth of local children's literature that reflects Malaysian society :

... Our children and teenagers are immersed in American and, to a lesser degree, British pop culture. ... This includes the books they read. Currently popular titles (the Twilight series, the Harry Potter books, Eragon, Wicked Lovely) may not be set in this world, and their characters may not even be human, but the cultural traditions used as references in the creation of these worlds and characters are obviously American and European.

She also reckons that writing children's book is somehow:

... looked down upon by Malaysia’s literati ...

who are more interested in trying to win Booker prizes and the like.

this isn't entirely true of course. We had Shirley Lim's Princess Shawl last year, Tinling Choong's Yuyu and the Banyan Tree will be out this year, and Shamini Flint has been writing some really excllent kids books, the latest of which is the highly readable Ten.

But there certainly could be more ... although I think it really can't happen without the active support all the way of the local publishing industry.