In the illustration gallery of the 2024 inaugural Singapore Children’s Book Festival from the Singapore Book Publishers association, Chloe Chang is honored as Illustrator of the Year. Image: SBPA
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Deadline for Proposals: February 9
While many of our Publishing Perspectives readers are familiar with Singapore’s professionally oriented 15-year-old Asian Festival of Children’s Content from from the seemingly indefatigable Singapore Book Council led by William Phuan. That one is normally held in May.
The Singapore Children’s Book Festival is a less readily recognized name, and is being prepared now for June 20 to 22 in what will be only its second outing.
This festival functions as a kind of workshop-intensive gathering of professional content specialists who propose to the Singapore Book Publishers Association some of the the topics they’re most interested in.
Audience members at this event are publishing staffers, educators, booksellers, librarians, and they’re involved to gain traction in the the publishing markets of Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia. And in calling for programming proposals, the publishers’ association is looking for “creators or publishers” who have published locally and are ready with an issue, trend, or special expertise to share with fellow professionals.
Co-organized by the Singapore Book Publishers Association and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, the Children’s Book festival last year featured a focus on artificial intelligence and author-illustrators’ work, moderated by Peter Shoppert; the complexities of bilingual books—something that Singapore’s creative community knows a lot about, with the island-state’s four official languages (Malay, English, Mandarin, and Tamil); and the ins and outs of translating illustration into various 3D media.
At the same time, the Singapore Children’s Book Festival is open for submissions in its Illustrator of the Year competition. In this case, the deadline for submissions is January 24, and books entered must have been published in 2024. Categories in which entries can be made are:
- Literary Work
- Nonfiction
- Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Textbook
- Educational Supplement
- Young Person’s Non-Fiction
- Young Person’s Fiction
- Picture Book
- Graphic Novel
- Professional Title
- Food Book
- Custom Publishing
- Cover Design
- Marketing Campaign
More from Publishing Perspectives on the book publishing industry and market of Singapore is here, more on children’s books is here, and more on publishing in Asia is here.