Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind

Wow. Day 2 of the Asian Festival of Children's Content was even better than day 1. The first presentation I chose to attend featured Karina Bolasco, the founder of Anvil Publishing Inc. in the Philippines, and Clive Newman, manager of sales, marketing, distribution, and foreign rights at Fremantle Press in Australia. Ms. Bolasco gave an overview of the distribution and sales of children's books in the Philippines and raised the challenges of Asians selling their children's books to other Asians. (Books from the West are cheaper than books from the East because they have much larger print runs.) Mr. Newman explained the challenge of book distribution in Australia (because of geography) and his experience venturing into digital distribution. Daphne Lee and Holly Thompson inspired us and showed us just how to create the best multicultural books for readers. Ms. Lee, a children's book editor in Malaysia, discussed the various definitions and objectives of multic...

How is everyone? :o) I should have my roundup of day 2 of the AFCC tomorrow. Right now I'd like to share a few more pictures from day 1. On day 1, I had dinner with some children's book writers and fellow children's book enthusiasts, including Kathleen Ahrens (former regional advisor of SCBWI Taiwan and present international regional advisor of SCBWI), Linda Tan Lingard (regional advisor of SCBWI Malaysia), Kenneth Quek (regional advisor of SCBWI Singapore), Irene Ying-Yu Chen (assistant regional advisor of SCBWI Taiwan), Holly Thompson (regional advisor of SCBWI Japan), and Chris Cheng (co-regional advisor of SCBWI Australia & New Zealand). We ate at an Indian restaurant. The conversation was great and you'll see from the last picture in this post that I thought the food was delicious. See you all tomorrow!

Hi, everyone! I'm in Singapore right now for the first Asian Festival of Children's Content (AFCC). The AFCC is a combination of the Asian Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference, the Asian Children's Publishers Symposium, the Asian Primary and Preschool Teachers Congress, and the Asian Parents Forum. It's a four-day event celebrating children's content and this year's theme is "Asian Content for the World's Children." The festival kicked off with an inspiring and truly welcoming message from Claire Chiang, the advisory board chairman of the festival. The first keynote speaker was Kenneth Tan, chief operating officer of the Media Development Authority of Singapore. His speech was entitled "The Great Content Divide: Bridging the Gap Between East and West." Is there a divide? Is there more Western children's content in the East than Eastern children's content in the West? Mr. Tan explained how that divide is getting smal...