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| Local author Shawn Seah and his books featuring Ho Weng Toh, Ee Peng Liang and Elizabeth Choy |
My good friend Shawn Seah has a strong interest in history, so when he wrote some children books our favourite topic, I jumped at the chance to review it.
Together with illustrator Patrick Yee, Shawn came up with the series Our Amazing Heroes. In this review, I will focus the above three books as these three individuals went through World War 2.
[The books are available on Shopee.]
The good
One thing I definitely liked about the book is that it brings the lesser-known pioneers of Singapore to the forefront. Being aimed at children, the language is simple and easy to understand. Patrick Yee does a great job in making the background and characters as colourful as possible to complement the accompanying text.
I also appreciate how Shawn used unique cultures, such as the Roman Catholicism, as a unifier in the Ho Weng Toh book to show how Singapore thrives as a multu-cultural country.
What to improve
I could not find much to critique but if I were to be pedantic, I wished that a little more research had been done about the uniforms and equipment of World War 2. For instance, the Elizbeth Choy book depicted one Kempeitai (Japanese secret police) as wearing the white arm band on the right arm, when realistically, it should on the left. In another scene, the Japanese solders were holding gray-coloured rifles, when they famously used the Arisaka, a brown rifle.
In conclusion
I enjoy the books and definitely give it a recommend if you have kids below 12!
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