“Kaki Cheh (Our Kind of Book)”: Representation and Reading for Pleasure in Singaporean Children
Panel Evelyn Wong, Maha Sripathy | Moderator: Kimberley Chiu
While Singaporean children consistently outperform their peers in English literacy, their rates of reading for pleasure have fallen to the “lowest in a decade” according to the Ministry of Education. At the same time, many Singaporean children express the belief that reading is not for “people like them”. How can we reconcile a “literary life” with a Singaporean life for our children? What role can Singaporean literature, including literature in Singlish, play in doing so? And how can educators, librarians, and parents help to make a love of story and of reading a part of children’s everyday lives?
Evelyn Wong (Singapore)
Evelyn Sue Wong is author of the Just a Little Mynah series, the first multilingual picture books published in Singapore. She writes to spark children’s imagination, with hope for real change. Her stories have been performed in children’s theatre, schools and festivals. Evelyn grew up with her father’s love for flying. She earned her wings with a private pilot’s license when she was 19 and is still flying, with children and books.
Maha Sripathy (Singapore)
Maha Sripathy works in the area of literacy and language education across the grades. Facilitating teacher understanding of students' language and literacy learning processes and applying pedagogic approaches to meet the different needs and abilities have been the focus of her passionate involvement in promoting critical literacy. She has provided language and communication consultancy services to multi-national corporations and curriculum development services, for schools and non-profit organizations in Singapore and the region.
Moderator Kimberley Chiu (Singapore)
Kimberley Chiu is a librarian with Singapore’s National Library Board. She works in collection development, selecting and purchasing books for children and teens. She is deeply interested in role that pleasure and delight play in developing childhood literacy, and in how Singaporean culture affects readers' and librarians' relationships with books and with the library. In her spare time, Kimberley enjoys cooking, petting cats, and playing Stardew Valley. She writes songs, is working on a novel, and tries to read a little every day.
Programme dates and times are subject to change.