Holidays are for reading!

There's now a national effort made to promote reading and I must say, it comes as a very nice surprise. For far too long, the focus at home and schools has been skewed towards academic success at the expense of everything else and reading (not guide books or anything academic-related) has been pushed to the back burner. It's about time we recognise that reading as a habit brings about intrinsic, long-term benefits. While ideally, it shouldn't take a national campaign to "force" us to read, we all know that in Singapore, it always helps the cause when the government endorses something.

For Lesley-Anne, I'm thankful that reading has become a deeply entrenched habit, so it's not something I need to remind her to do. Last week, she was attending our church camp and during the free time, she spent it reading Sophie's World. Her friend commented, "only you will bring a book to church camp." Keke.

Andre needs a little more cajoling but I'm happy to say that he did get sufficiently interested in a series of books he borrowed from the library these June holidays, to spend a little time reading. Just in case you're wondering, the series is Taken by Erin Bowman.

Admittedly, he spent more time building his Lego, but hey, I'm always happy for small blessings! Yes, it's Andre's 'O' level year but I do believe that school holidays should have some protected time for leisure. (And I prefer Lego over phone gaming any time). I also know that Andre is 15 going on 16, but as he told me, "The box did say '7 and up'."

Since we're on the topic of reading, coming up in the next few weeks is Read! Fest 2016 organised by the National Library Board. I will be participating in two panel sessions:

1) Adventures in Parenthood: Penning the Agony and the Ecstasy! With me will be two other writers of "parenting" books. I use parenting in inverted commas because the books we wrote aren't really about parenting per se, more like our misadventures in parenting!

2) Immediately following that is another panel Publishing Adventures: It’s All in the Family! Lesley-Anne will be joining me in this panel and we'll be talking about our experiences writing together as mother and daughter.

So if you'd like to meet us, please do join in the sessions! Details below:

Date: Saturday, 2 July 2016
Time: 2-3pm (first session), 3.30-4.30pm (second session)
Venue: Bishan Public Library (Programme Zone)

Attendance is free but you'll need to register. Click on the above links to do the registration.

Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of the school holidays and remember, read, read, read!