I was trying to find some Singapore based Malay books for children because I can’t find any at Popular Bookstore. The only things I found were assessment books and no stories in Malay.
My friends instead recommended me to check out Ungu Pen online store.
Basically, there are a number of Malay books for children but Singapore based ones aren’t that many comparatively and there is a difference between Singapore, Malaysia and bahasa Indonesia too in terms of context.
I bought Ally at Home and some other books (will review that in another post) from Ungu Pen but then I decided to check Poppet World where the Ally series is from to just check out what more is available.
And I got more books and received a sticker sheet and also got a limited edition Ally plushy doll for a child because they can have story time with an actual Ally!!
The Ally’s Adventure series is written by Norlin Samat and it’s a board book style which has a lovely smooth texture where kids can touch and turn too.
This is Ally at Home, you can see that it is in both English and Malay. They use simple languages so that your child can read or be read to, to know the story.
Also as you can see, the windows are “HDB” styled, if you live in Singapore, these things will seem more familiar to you.
In Ally at the Library, it amuses me that Ally is with human children but let’s ignore that because this is a children’s book. I want to see more cat friends though!
And the library does remind you of the ones we have here at the National Library children’s section.
For Ally at the Zoo, if you read this to your children, you can go to our Singapore Zoo and point out the animals or say “Hey, this is where Ally went!”.
I am amused that there are tigers and that Ally is a different kind of adventuring cat.
I won’t spoil the endings or how the story goes for each book but they are fun for you to read out to children in both English and Malay so that they can recognize words and understand them.
At the time of this post, you can join Ally at their facebook page to know if they have online activities or offlline ones too.
Since I bought more books at the Poppet World website where they are the publishers, I managed to get a sticker sheet (while stocks last)!
Also the Ally plushy doll is limited edition because of course, they wouldn’t be able to make thousands but just enough so if you want to get an Ally plushy, just get it.
She is really cute and her backpack actually opens and you can put maybe an eraser or something in it.
Anyway, feel free to recommend me Singapore based Malay books for children and young adults too! I feel like there’s too many angsty ones aimed for adults and the fun ones for children, there’s not enough?
