KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. -- 17 February 2009. It was already 5:30 p.m. and yet there was another presentation. I wanted to protest, I wanted to excuse myself, I wanted to sneak into my room, just one floor below the Executive Lounge.
But good manners prevailed over childishness.
“Please wake me up if I snore,” I told my table mate.
But good manners prevailed over childishness.
“Please wake me up if I snore,” I told my table mate.
Suchen Christine Lim posing graciously with me.
The last speaker on the first day of the seminar was a slender lady with a gentle voice. She was a reserved speaker compared to the flamboyant, expressive, and gregarious Janet Evans of UK.
A Singaporean, she is Suchen Christine Lim. She began by reading a poem of hers from her book, The Lies That Build a Marriage.
The poem’s about a child who doesn’t speak a word of English on her first day in school. The child is bewildered, scared, and lost. Then a teacher reads stories from picture books to the class.
The child is assured by the illustrations and the sound of the words. She doesn’t understand the words but the illustrations open the world of imagination to her. After two years, the child becomes fluent in English.
Suchen Christine Lim closed the book she was reading, then said, “That child was me. My advice to teachers? Keep reading aloud to your pupils even if they don’t seem to understand. One day, they will.”
Suchen said she was number 44 out of 45 pupils when she was in Grades 1 and 2. Then she shot up to number 3 in third grade! Stephen D. Krashen, an American reading advocate, would love to meet Suchen and document her early reading experiences.
However, although Suchen had become an achiever, all was not well. Suchen was soon reading on her own, fluently and critically. She said she was agitated that her Chinese family, culture, and identity were not in the books she read.
The solution? She wrote books about her own people.
She read to us a simple book entitled, Granny, and illustrated by Roy Foo. She wrote it in 1990 for the Ministry of Education of Singapore. It was almost aborted because it was deemed inappropriate for children.
Thank heavens, there’s a tenacious and steadfast child in the slender and soft-spoken Suchen. Surreptitiously, she asked her colleagues to read Granny and to read it to real children.
Her colleagues told her they cried after reading the story. And the children cried after listening to the story. They all cried and they all loved Granny.
Thanks to their honest and courageous tears, the book has lived and has been re-issued this year for official use of the Ministry of Education of Singapore!
What is Granny all about? It’s about a Chinese grandmother and granddaughter in Singapore. They don’t have names, just granny and child.
The book shows the everyday relationship between them. Like every curious child, she asks many ‘why’ and ‘what if’ questions. One day, death snatches Granny away from this curious and adorable child. The book ends with the little girl lying in bed, caressing the quilt her granny had made for her.
Roy Foo’s simple illustration matches Suchen’s simple story. And yet the illustration deepens the impact of the text and honors the elderly as well as the culture of Chinese families in Singapore.
Taken together, Suchen’s text and Roy’s illustration tell a powerful story which score’s a bull’s eye because it goes straight to the readers’ heart. Its simplicity is its strength. There’s no sentimentalism, no mawkish tears. All it offers is innocent grief, quiet acceptance, and loving remembrance.
As I write this article, I cry quiet tears for a child I never met and never will. His name is Julian Carlo Miguel “Amiel” Alcantara, a 10-year old pupil at the Ateneo Grade School in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines.
The present tense in the previous sentence isn’t a grammatical mistake. I am deliberately choosing the present tense.
Amiel’s young life was snuffed out by a van gone berserk in his school’s parking lot last Tuesday, February 24.
Death isn’t an inappropriate subject matter for children’s picture storybooks.
Someday, I wish Amiel’s family, classmates, and friends would be able to read Jenny Angel and Granny. I wish they’d be comforted and healed.
A Singaporean, she is Suchen Christine Lim. She began by reading a poem of hers from her book, The Lies That Build a Marriage.
The poem’s about a child who doesn’t speak a word of English on her first day in school. The child is bewildered, scared, and lost. Then a teacher reads stories from picture books to the class.
The child is assured by the illustrations and the sound of the words. She doesn’t understand the words but the illustrations open the world of imagination to her. After two years, the child becomes fluent in English.
Suchen Christine Lim closed the book she was reading, then said, “That child was me. My advice to teachers? Keep reading aloud to your pupils even if they don’t seem to understand. One day, they will.”
Suchen said she was number 44 out of 45 pupils when she was in Grades 1 and 2. Then she shot up to number 3 in third grade! Stephen D. Krashen, an American reading advocate, would love to meet Suchen and document her early reading experiences.
However, although Suchen had become an achiever, all was not well. Suchen was soon reading on her own, fluently and critically. She said she was agitated that her Chinese family, culture, and identity were not in the books she read.
The solution? She wrote books about her own people.
She read to us a simple book entitled, Granny, and illustrated by Roy Foo. She wrote it in 1990 for the Ministry of Education of Singapore. It was almost aborted because it was deemed inappropriate for children.
Thank heavens, there’s a tenacious and steadfast child in the slender and soft-spoken Suchen. Surreptitiously, she asked her colleagues to read Granny and to read it to real children.
Her colleagues told her they cried after reading the story. And the children cried after listening to the story. They all cried and they all loved Granny.
Thanks to their honest and courageous tears, the book has lived and has been re-issued this year for official use of the Ministry of Education of Singapore!
What is Granny all about? It’s about a Chinese grandmother and granddaughter in Singapore. They don’t have names, just granny and child.
The book shows the everyday relationship between them. Like every curious child, she asks many ‘why’ and ‘what if’ questions. One day, death snatches Granny away from this curious and adorable child. The book ends with the little girl lying in bed, caressing the quilt her granny had made for her.
Roy Foo’s simple illustration matches Suchen’s simple story. And yet the illustration deepens the impact of the text and honors the elderly as well as the culture of Chinese families in Singapore.
Taken together, Suchen’s text and Roy’s illustration tell a powerful story which score’s a bull’s eye because it goes straight to the readers’ heart. Its simplicity is its strength. There’s no sentimentalism, no mawkish tears. All it offers is innocent grief, quiet acceptance, and loving remembrance.
As I write this article, I cry quiet tears for a child I never met and never will. His name is Julian Carlo Miguel “Amiel” Alcantara, a 10-year old pupil at the Ateneo Grade School in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines.
The present tense in the previous sentence isn’t a grammatical mistake. I am deliberately choosing the present tense.
Amiel’s young life was snuffed out by a van gone berserk in his school’s parking lot last Tuesday, February 24.
Death isn’t an inappropriate subject matter for children’s picture storybooks.
Someday, I wish Amiel’s family, classmates, and friends would be able to read Jenny Angel and Granny. I wish they’d be comforted and healed.
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