Do Book Awards Matter?
PanelClaudia Ju, Fred Minn, Klaas Verplancke, Priscilla Tey | Moderator: Melanie Lee
Festival Pass| Festival Talk Pass
Children’s literary awards are often viewed as benchmarks of quality and recognition—but what do they really shape? Are they canon-makers, or glorified promotional tools?
In this panel, winners and judges of Singapore book awards - the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book and Popular Readers’ Choice along with the organiser and chief judge of the Nami Island Illustration Prize examine how awards influence creators, publishers, and readers. Drawing on diverse cultural and publishing contexts, panellists discuss the impact of awards on visibility, career pathways, publishing decisions, and reading cultures, and reflect on their broader role in shaping children’s literary ecosystems today.
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Claudia Ju (Singapore)
Claudia Ju is the author of the bilingual children’s book, My Singapore Childhood, winner of the Popular Singapore Reader’s Choice Awards. She began her career as a journalist in Singapore before moving into the corporate world, where she has led communications and public affairs for major technology and finance firms across Asia and Europe. A specialist in cross-cultural communications, she draws on her bilingual storytelling to create narratives that resonate across borders and generations, celebrating love, memory, and timeless nostalgia.
Fred Minn (Korea)
With numerous leadership roles in storytelling-related organisations, Fred Minn has built a career in creating interactive content from picture books. Following a family legacy in the publishing industry, his work over the years has focused on making books and culture more accessible to children, while supporting the development of the picture book industry by actively participating in the work of foundations such as IBBY.
His efforts in organising the annual NAMBOOK Festival and the biannual NAMI COUNCOURS, held at one of South Korea’s most popular tourist destinations, Nami Island, have brought picture books and the art of picture book illustration out of traditional venues such as libraries, and into the realm of active participation and enjoyment for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have joined the events over the years.
Klaas Verplancke (Belgium)
Klaas Verplancke is an internationally acclaimed animator, designer, author and illustrator of more than 150 books, which have been translated to more than 60 languages. His quirky illustrations, known for their sense of humor and surrealism, have been commissioned by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Museum of Modern Art New York, to name a few, and has been selected for the annuals of American Illustration, Society of Illustrators, AOI, and 3x3 magazine. He has won the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Award, was a top-five finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards and has received 18 consecutive nominations for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, resulting in an worldwide invitations as a juror (Bologna Illustrator Exhibition, Nami Concours Korea, and more), teacher, reviewer, and curator. Klaas is also lecturer of Image Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. Find him at www.klaas.be
Priscilla Tey (Singapore)
Priscilla Tey is an award-winning illustrator, multimedia artist and author. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she works with a variety of media from watercolour, to digital illustration and large scale installations. Priscilla is internationally known for her books In-Between Things, and Counting in Dog Years (Candlewick Press), which have received praise from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Public Library. Her book The Vicious Cycle will also be published in late 2026 by Macmillan Publishers (US).
Melanie Lee (Singapore)
Melanie Lee is the author of the award-winning middle-grade graphic novel series, Amazing Ash & Superhero Ah Ma and picture book series, The Adventures of Squirky the Alien. She also wrote Out & About in Singapore, a travel guide series for children. She is a part-time communications and creative writing lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Programme dates and times are subject to change.