Developed in the 1960s at the National Library Singapore to raise the awareness and understanding of Asian-centric children’s literature. From an initial collection comprising mainly children’s literature of British or American origin written by Western authors, the collection was later developed by local children’s librarians to reflect Asian children, backgrounds, and communities in the four official languages of Singapore – English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.
Reflective of Asian cultural and literary heritage, it contains folk tales, fairy tales, myths and legends and selected non-fiction, involving largely materials depicting customs and socio-cultural practices and beliefs. In view of its long historical development and unique heritage status, this collection was curated as a special collection meant for reference and research in 2005.
