Watch out for us as we travel along MRT train routes to look for readers on the go! And to kick start the project, we have Kenneth from the Book Council sharing his current read.
Reading American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Read the book’s wiki page!
And you can find American Born Chinese in the public libraries. Click here to view the list of libraries.
Did you know: 66% of the world’s illiterate population lives in Asia?
The Asia Foundation certainly does. In answer to that fact, this non-profit’s Books for Asia programme is launching Storytime in Asia, a month-long campaign that aims to deliver more than 120,000 children’s books to over a thousand schools in Asia, starting on August 13th. The campaign celebrates the role of children’s books in developing reading habits and literacy, and is scheduled to culminate during the week of International Literacy Day with a series of literacy-promoting events around Asia.
Colourful, imaginative children’s books that inspire learning are vital in encouraging early childhood literacy. Unfortunately, many schools and families don’t have access to a wide selection of books or can’t afford to buy them.
Enter Books for Asia. The Storytime in Asia campaign brings together four major children’s book publishers Abrams, Penguin Young Readers, Scholastic, and Little, Brown for Young Readers, who have each pledged a lot of books to the campaign. Scholastic alone has promised 100,000 books to Storytime in Asia.
Since Storytime in Asia will be bringing books to Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, you can bet shipping costs will be hefty. But OOCL, a leading container shipping company known for its educational and community efforts, has already promised to underwrite shipping costs.
Books for Asia estimates that two million children will be positively impacted by Storytime in Asia.
A few things you can do to help:
In the modern world of advertising and branding, packaging is (almost) everything. Needless to say, that applies to book covers too. A book cover is the packaging of the product – the book, and a good cover adds an oomph factor which is important for it to differentiate itself from the countless number of publications in a bookstore. Also, a good and effective cover provides a peek to the content without the reader flipping it over for the synopsis.
Chip Kidd is a graphic designer for Alfred A. Knopf and has designed the covers for books such as Jurassic Park, Naked and IQ84.
Watch the video below and be inspired!