By SH Lim

Recent local publications of illustrated children’s books led SH Lim into ruminations of their importance.

Streaming National Public Radio (NPR) is playing. The station belongs to PBS in the United States. Coincidentally, this episode deals with fairy tales and their importance to us—both adults and children.  The first discussion centres on Kenneth Grahame, the English writer of ‘The Wind and the Willows’ which was published in 1908 to instant success. Even the president of the United States, who at first didn’t care for the work, got behind it, urging publication in the country, when his children told him how good it was. Something in the work appealed to them.

There’s something about this kind of magical world—removed from the real world of noisy, dusty exhaust-filled streets, sky-reaching condominiums and over-brightly lit shopping malls. According to child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in ‘The Uses of Enchantment’ (published in 1976), fairy tales and traditional folklore are important to children because they help children grapple in ‘symbolic terms’ with their insecurities, fears and questions. Children’s books invite their young readers into an imaginative world and with hints (although some tend to be didactic) to signpost young people to navigate the space between the child world and the adult world. Bettelheim argues that by engaging with these ‘socially-evolved stories’, children would be better prepared for their own future.

This last assertion should nudge parents to make a bee-line to the nearest bookstore and to the children’s book section and to start browsing. For who would want their child to be unimaginative, approaching his or her future with dull, mechanical sensibilities?  Who doesn’t want to be prepared for the future? But there’s a dearth of locally written children’s books to provide things in a local context. Although something is happening to tease out a few.

To give a leg up, MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd in the most recent award ceremony for a regular writing competition it sponsors, announced that in 2010 the company would focus more on publishing local writers of children’s books.  Just recently, it released a collection of five written by Wong Ching Hsia and illustrated by Tan Vay Fern. All share a similar treatment in their square sized, the style of illustration and alliterative titles, like ‘The Miserable Moon’ and ‘The Terribly Tall Triangle’. Only ‘The Ugly Green Umbrella’ breaks the spell. But then, not many colours begin with ‘U’ that don’t already sound like the first syllable of ‘umbrella’.

‘I try not to write for children, but to write from the child in me,’ says Ms Wong.  ‘I try to maintain a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Very often when I start writing, I do not know how the story will end. It comes naturally as I continue writing. And when the story manages to surprise the child in me, I am satisfied.’ Asha Gill, who together with Fay Khoo, is responsible for the Eco Kids series, also confesses to writing from ‘a little bit of childishness that never got stamped out’.  This latter collaboration has produced ‘The Eco Kids and the Plastic Bag Pickle’, ‘The Eco Kids and the Wasteful Water Worry’ and ‘The Eco Kids and the Gas Guzzler Gaffe’. Three more will be out in the middle of the year. And I’m sure, all with equal alliterative titles.

Beyond a doubt, these adult writers of children’s books offer their young readers the opportunity to imagine something different—a world where people are more thoughtful, kinder, caring. In some ways these books point out the bizarre way we value things to the detriment of our relationships, our environment and communities. And they challenge readers to look beyond the surface, to care more about the planet that they live on, to be kinder to the people they encounter and in the end create desired communities.  Where there’s a place for the too tall triangle; where melodious music comes from a diversity of instruments not just one from the percussion family; where water is not wasted but wisely used. In these short tales, the child reader can be the hero, empowered to make changes. 

Ms Foo, says, ‘At the risk of using an oft-abused phrase, we are trying to ‘edutain’, that is, simultaneously entertaining children while teaching them a vital lesson about the environment.’ Echoing her sentiments, Jessie Wee says, ‘Entertain. Give pleasure in reading! When the child is ready, he or she will learn from whatever values he/she can find in my home-grown stories.’ Ms Wee together with her illustrator Kwan ShanMei have put together five illustrated books on ‘The Adventures of Mooty’, a mouse.

The first Children’s Laureate in the United Kingdom, Quentin Blake, who illustrates children’s books, at his acceptance speech in 1999 said that ‘[children’s books], at their best, are primers in the development of the emotional, the moral and the imaginative life. And they can be a celebration of what is like to be a human being. That’s why they are important’.