It’s been a couple of years since I interviewed Filipino writers Sophia Lee and Catherine Torres at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore, shortly after the results of the Scholastic Asian Book Award were announced. It was a proud moment for the Philippines as Sophie’s novel, “What Things Mean” was named the winner of the Scholastic Asian Book Award, while Catherine’s novel, “Sula’s Voyage,” was one of the finalists.
The Scholastic Asian Book Award aims to recognize excellence in fiction in Asian stories for children, showcase the diversity of literary talent within the region, and to encourage and inspire more books and stories with Asian content. (Read more about it.)
The way Sophia and Catherine described their novels definitely made me long to read them, and I finally got to, as review copies of the books made their way to me a couple of weeks ago!