PM Lee, the storyteller

By Charissa Yong, The Sunday Times, 5 Oct 2014

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong turned storyteller yesterday for a National Library Board (NLB) reading programme.

About 120 children listened with rapt attention as he read them a storybook, Go To Sleep, Gecko, based on a Balinese folk tale. He even chirped like a lizard for dramatic effect.

The event at the Ang Mo Kio Public Library marked the 10th anniversary of kidsRead, a programme in which volunteers read to children from low-income families to help them develop a love for reading.

This is done at 184 reading clubs in schools, community centres, family service centres and voluntary welfare organisations.

From next year, it will expand to include those from families with a gross monthly income of up to $6,000, up from $3,500 currently, so as to reach even more children.

Announcing this yesterday, Mr Lee said: "When a child is young, the best gift we can give the child is the gift of reading."

Since the programme started in 2004, more than 27,000 children aged between four and eight have benefited.

Mr Lee recounted how his mother, the late Madam Kwa Geok Choo, used to read storybooks to him when he was young, and how he learnt to read after she asked him to read a book on his own.

One of his favourite books was The Story About Ping, about a duckling on the Yangtze River.

"One day, I brought the book to my mother and said, 'Please can you read, Mama, read me this story again?' She said, 'You go and read yourself; you know how to read now'," he recalled.

When he had children of his own, he said, he often read to them when they were young as well.

My mother used to read stories to me when I was small. One of my favourite books was “The Story of Ping” – I read it at...
Posted by Lee Hsien Loong on Saturday, October 4, 2014

At yesterday's event, held in Ang Mo Kio GRC where he is a Member of Parliament, he also presented awards to the 10 longest-running kidsRead clubs and the 10 longest- serving volunteers.

More than 9,000 volunteers have been involved to date.

Two of them are Mr Jimmy Ho, 71, and his wife, Madam Grace Chng, 66, who started an informal reading programme for primary school pupils in Telok Blangah in 2003, before joining kidsRead a year later.

Said Mr Ho, a retired principal: "We wanted to encourage the children to read. There's a whole new world of learning in books."

Secondary school student Abdul Majeed Abdul Latiff, 14, said he did not have the habit of reading before joining kidsRead at the age of five.

A volunteer for the past three years, he said: "Reading was kind of boring (before). But now I find it a bit more interesting."