Middle grade children's literature in Singapore: analysing the representation of Singapore in locally published children's middle grade novels in English

• Main Author: Choo, Bee San
• Other Authors: Brendan Luyt
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Library and information science; Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/164986
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In 2006, a paper was published by a visiting academic to Singapore titled, “The Struggle to Develop a Distinctive Children’s Literature in Singapore”. The research for the paper was done between 2001 and 2003. It has been two decades since, and with the boom in local publishing over the past decade, the time is ripe to revisit that premise and see if Singapore has in fact developed a distinctive children’s literature since, and whether those challenges raised are still an issue today. In seeking to answer the question as to whether Singapore is represented in locally published middle grade children’s literature, I adopted the content analysis approach to review a sample of locally published middle grade novels. The studies reveal that while there are some titles that do not have any representation of Singapore, the majority of the published titles do, and are also the ones that have enjoyed commercial success not just in Singapore, but regionally and beyond as well. Some of the challenges to publishing in Singapore are discussed, including the economic viability of being a Singaporean publisher, and the challenges of censorship.