PaperTigers is proud to be a co-sponsor of the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) which is held annually in Singapore. The 2012 AFCC will take place May 26 – 29 and programme directors Dr. Myra Garces-Bacsal and Dr Nancy Johnson are hard at work ensuring that this year’s programme is as chock-full (perhaps even more so!) as the 2011 programme.  To learn more about what the AFCC is all about, check out this video from the 2011 Festival which features interview clips with Mr. Ramachandran (Executive Director of the NBDCS), award winning authors Chris Cheng and Pooja Makhijani, as well as myself.

Head on over to the PaperTigers website to read Mr. Ramachandran’s article Writers and Illustrators Emerging on the Singapore Scene.

Mr. Ramachandran is the Executive Director of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS). Over the course of his career as a librarian, including in his role as National Librarian of Singapore, he was always actively involved in the NBDCS, serving as its Honorary Secretary and subsequently as its Chairman. Following his retirement from the National Library, he was appointed Secretary General of the International Federation of Libraries and Institutions (IFLA). In 2006, he was invited to become Executive  Director of the NBDCS, in order to bring to fruition the vision he had had for the organisation during his term as Chairman. One of the initiatives he has brought into being is the acclaimed Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC), an annual event that has now been running for two years. You can read our recent interview with Mr. Ramachandran by clicking here.

Head on over to the PaperTigers website to read our interview with R. Ramachandran, Executive Director of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS).

Here are a few snippets -

About why the Asian Children’s Writers and Illustrators Conference, which has since grown in to the Asian Festival of Asian Content (AFCC) came into being in 2000:

As a librarian I realised that the availability of children’s literature with an Asian focus was limited: limited in number, that is. And those books that were available were not attractively produced and were aggressively marketed. The good books produced by the Asian diaspora were too expensive and again not readily distributed in Asia. Asian children were not reading about themselves. The books that were being read were not set in an environment that they were familiar with and could relate to. In the meantime, schools and libraries were being developed. The need for materials for Asian Children was urgent.

About the work of the NBDCS:

Organisations like ours must continue our efforts to impress upon people that stories, reading and writing are fundamental, no matter what form they take and no matter how technology develops.

And about the future of the book:

I still see scope for books as we know them. But a book will have to become a work of art, a niche publication that combines the beauty of paper, words and art on paper, packaged and presented in all its glory to the reader. Such a book will always have a place and a market, even as technology advances and impacts on book publishing as a whole. Like libraries, books will not perish. They will embrace technology, and reinvent themselves as a niche player. [...]

What concerns me, though, is that there appears to be a lack of confidence among publishers to rethink and use the changes in technology to present the book in all its might and glory, and to exploit its unique features to retain the readers and buyers.

Rama certainly provides food for thought – what do you think?

Read the complete interview here.