From PowerPoint to storyboard: Why corporate high-flier quit for her dream job of children’s author
Hong Kong mother-of-two Libby Lam turned her back on first love – art – due to parents’ expectations, but her daughters rekindled her passion for drawing
The idea of hunting down children – and then deep-frying them for dinner – seems an unlikely subject for a bedtime story by former corporate-executive-turned-children’s-author Libby Lam.
The idea for the Hong Kong mother of two’s third picture book, the bestselling Crispy Children, published by We Press in 2017, came to her when she was planning to enter a Singapore story competition.
We were told to listen to what we were told when I was a child, but I admire my two girls for challenging me
Lam, 42, was so taken by the theme – inspired by Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect – examining why ordinary, even good people can turn evil – that the accomplished illustrator’s 40-page book took shape in no more than 15 minutes.
Set against the vibrant landscape of China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, her story sees a troubled farmer faced with a moral dilemma of having to hunt down the children for his master or losing his job.