Children and young adults' award-winning literature in Malaysia, 1957-2006: A bibliographic study / Nor Alina Ong

• Main Author: Nor Alina , Ong
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Z665 Library Science. Information Science
• Online Access: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/10829/1/Nor_Alina_Ong.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/10829/

This study is an attempt to describe the historical development of children and young adults’ in Malaysia form 1976 to 2006. It also provides a bibliographic description and quantitative analysis of Malaysian award winning children and young adults’ literature by describing frequency of book awards and writing competition, prizes and organisations involved, genres, winning authors and categories by children and young adults. This study uses a mixed approach of historical research and bibliographic study. Historical method is used to study the contents of sources, both primary and secondary such as journal articles from Dewan Sastera, Dewan Siswa, books, newspaper reports and printed programmes in order to put into chronology the events that lead up to the organisation and development of children and young adults’ literary prizes in Malaysia. Subsequently, descriptive statistics is used to describe the frequency of awards, genres, organisations involved, categories, years of awards, prizes value and the winning authors and their works. In the early years, writing competitions were mostly organised by DBP, a government agency; in this era, the private sector had overtaken the government in organising and sponsoring literary prizes. Utusan Group of Companies which started the Utusan Literary Prize in 1985 is now the most active organisation to sponsor and manage literary prizes in Malaysia, having held a total of 45 competitions. Altogether, there are 51 awards by name which had held 130 writing competitions for both children and young adults’ literature between the year 1960 and 2006. From the number of 130 writing competitions, the most number was for short stories (n=66), followed by 38 competitions for novels and 15 for poetry with the least is for drama (8) in both children and young adults’ literature prizes. Bank Rakyat had concentrated on short story and poetry while iii Utusan has been concentrating on novels and short stories. Other organisations, like the Unity Department and Environment Department had only focused on short stories, so have MPH Bookstore. DBP is the organisation which had given the most awards for children’s literature over the years; that is, 16 awards out of 24 awards for children literature. Nevertheless, most of the awards had been given prior to 20 years ago. The number of young adults’ literary awards overwhelmed children’s literary awards by a ratio of 4.7:1 (82.3%). The period between 1991-2000 has the most competitions been held for both children and young adults literature. The National Book Prize had been given from 1991 till 1996 before it was terminated. Over the span of 50 years, there had been 699 writers for all the 969 winning titles of all genres which cover the writing competitions. 40.2% (n=390) of the prizes are won by authors who have won twice or more, while 59.8% (n=579) of the prizes are won by one time winners. From the 80 prizes for the four book awards; 51 (63.8%) had no winners which are attributed to not fulfilling to judges’ expectations. This phenomenon exhibits the lack of quality or the much needed improvement in quality for our children and young adult literature. Prizes value range from RM3 000 in 1982, to the present of RM20 000 for young adults’ novels. Prizes for short stories vary widely. The National Book Prize awarded RM5 000 and a certificate for the main prize and RM2 000 for each category. The MBBY-Bitara Book Award does not offer monetary prize but a certificate and a log of acknowledgement on the winning book.