This book for kindergarten students features a tiger on its front cover and a map of Malaya on the back. Its illustrations were also local in context. For example, one page featured Malay men in sarong with kampong houses in the background.Since the 1930s, the colonial government in Singapore tried to get Chinese schools to use textbooks that refocused its content away from China to Malaya instead. In the early phases, many publishers responded to these calls (and bans) by making superficial changes like redesigning the covers with to incorporate different elements, most popularly coconut trees, that were supposed to reflect the geography of Malaya without making significant changes to the content. It was only after the war, following the Fenn-Wu report of 1951 with recommendations that Chinese schools in Malaya should contribute more “to the goal of an independent Malayan nation composed of people of many races but having a common loyalty”, that the content of these textbooks underwent significant changes.
