7 Questions with the authors and illustrator of ‘Exploring Southeast Asia with’ series and why it should be your next read!

 Today we are in conversation with Eva Wong Nava, Jeffrey Say and Quek Hong Shin about their latest series of four picture books. The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia. 

Q1) How would you describe the ‘Exploring Southeast Asia with’ series in a sentence? 

Eva: It’s a series of creative non-fiction picture books targeted at middle grade and primary school children taking them through four Southeast Asian countries — Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia – by exploring the lives of four prominent artists and their artworks. 

Jeffrey: The series of books aims to educate young readers about the art and culture of Southeast Asia as seen through the lens of famous visual artists. 

Hong Shin: A celebration of Southeast Asian landscape, arts, and aesthetics.   

Q2) How did this series come into being?
 

Eva: Each story is unique to the lives of the artist and the country they come from. Southeast Asia is made up of eleven countries. It would have been ideal if we had the time and resources to cover each one. However, scholarship of Southeast Asia and their artists is still scant for some countries. So, as art historians, Jeffrey and I chose four countries and artists that are relatively well-known amongst scholars of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art histories.  

Jeffrey: Eva and I were sitting down and having coffee about four years ago and I lamented about how there are very few books on Southeast Asian art for young readers. We decided to change that. The idea was to create four books one after another, but our Publisher insisted us to write all the books at the same time so that they can be bought together as a set. I came up with the idea for the four artists and bounced the idea off Eva to see if these artists would make for an interesting children’s story. The rest is history.  

Q3) What did the research process for the picture books look like? 

Eva: Both Jeffrey and I read the same articles and journals with information about the artists – Liu Kang, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Chuah Thean Teng, and Affandi – as well as the histories of these countries. From these, I came up with the story line and Jeffrey did the more academic work – their biographies and the questions in the back matter of the book. The work was split up this way because I have experience in writing creative non-fiction for children. As a team, we worked together collaboratively: Jeffrey read my parts and the two of us had to come to agreement on how the story was written and I read the bios and questions, and added some of my own, and we edited the manuscripts together. 

This project took us four years to complete. The challenge was managing a big project like this with me in the U.K. and Jeffrey and Hong Shin in Singapore and each one of us living with Covid restrictions and its aftermath.  

Jeffrey: As an art historian with access to databases, I sourced scholarly articles related to each artist. To reimagine the lives of the artists and their works in a picture book, I had to gather as many materials as possible for each artist so that some of the most interesting details can be captured in the texts and illustrations. The research entailed approaching the sons of Chuah Thean Teng for archival materials on their late father. As such, the research process ensures that the story told in each book is as accurate as possible. 

Hong Shin: Quite some time was spent scouring the internet for visual references of the artists and their works. One of the biggest challenges was to reimagine many of the (creative fictional) scenarios as there is certainly no photographic evidence of them. I did have some fun and lots of artistic liberty to depict the artists’ appearances when they were younger.

Q4) What was the process of illustrating the book? 

Hong Shin: After gathering images from the internet, I spent time trying to imitate and emulate the artistic style of the artists by observing their paintings. Each of them has a very distinctive style and I wanted to showcase that in my illustrations. This meant making many preliminary sketches and letting their respective artworks inspire me. Eva’s words are vivid and descriptive, so I chose the best visual compositions in an attempt to capture the mood or atmosphere. The illustrations were all done digitally, so it was quite interesting for me to use the digital medium to recreate the look and feel of fine art paintings.
 

Q5) What was the best part about working on this series of picture books?
 

Eva: For me it was being able to tell the stories of four Southeast Asian artists in collaboration with a respected colleague and cherished friend, and a fellow art historian. This is a series of picture book biographies, which is a genre of picture books. Picture book writing is a craft and differs from writing novels and academic writing. It is a structured and tight form because we have up to 1,000 words to tell the story, still keeping the story arc — beginning, middle, end — intact. Then, there is also the character arc, where the story needs to show the main character learning and growing as their story progresses. And I had to do all this creatively, which doesn’t mean I make up information because these are biographies, the story of a moment in someone’s life, but that I had to write creatively, using accessible, child-friendly words, and choosing the point of entry to start each artist’s story. I had to work with the facts to extract a story, and that requires separating the husk from the rice grain. While doing this, I had to be mindful of the illustrator because Hong Shin will need to animate my words with his art, so I had to leave him space in my text to do this. All said, picture book writing is a collaboration, always. It takes two authors — the writer and the illustrator — to create a picture book. (In our case, it took two authors and an illustrator.) Hence, publishers have come to call picture book creation a craft. As a picture book author, I have honed this craft over the years in my career as a children’s book author. 

And, so we have it: 4 artists, 2 authors, 1 illustrator, and 3 cheers!  

Jeffrey: This series of books was my very first foray into the world of kid lit. The best part about working on it was about learning what it takes to write a children’s book. In this regard, I have learned much from both Eva and Hong Shin, who have won awards for kid lit, respectively. I also found it interesting to find an academic like myself collaborating with Eva, and we enjoyed exchanging ideas with one another. It was a fun project all in all. 

Hong Shin: Being given the ‘power’ to embody the spirit or emotion the artists were feeling at the turning points of their artistic careers. For e.g. The anguish in Affandi’s brushstrokes and the tenacity, and feminine sensitivity of Anita Magsaysay-Ho. And also, it is quite a dream come true to work on the subject matter of art. This is because when I was young, I was truly inspired by great artists like Monet and Van Gogh, so I appreciate this great opportunity for us to introduce prominent artists in the region to the younger generation via picture book stories.

Q6) What do you hope the young readers will take away from this book? 

Eva: As an author, giving children a reason to read for pleasure is why I write. Though these are picture books, filled with Hong Shin’s gorgeous artwork, they’re also good for adults to read. These are short stories, if you will, and they inform readers, younger and older, about the artist, their country and their life’s work. It’s a fun way to learn some art history (the study of humanity through its art) without having the pressure to pass exams or learn facts by heart. And as many of these artworks are found at the National Gallery of Singapore or in galleries and museums in the artist’s home countries, readers can see the works of art for themselves IRL. 

Southeast Asia is lacking in books for children about our own artists. More needs to be done and written about lest our children think that Southeast Asia as a region lacks art and history.  

Jeffrey: As an arts educator, I have been a firm believer that to nurture a cultured population, children need to be taught how to appreciate the arts from a young age. An added motivation for conceptualizing these books is the desire for our local children to get to know famous artists from our very own backyard as most children’s books on art are on Western artists. 

 Hong Shin: Being able to introduce these Southeast Asian artists, and their works and hopefully help the readers recognize them in galleries around the world would be very gratifying. I also hope that children reading these books will realize that there is beauty in daily life, as shown in the stories of the artists. 

Q7) 3 emojis that best describe your feelings about the books.  

Eva: ? #representationmatters ? collaboration ? love art and history  

Jeffrey: ???

Hong Shin: ??? 

Exploring Southeast Asia with series is now available at bookstores near you and on Amazon. Grab your copy of these amazing picture books today!

– by Garima Bhatt