Me and Fighter at McDonald’s today.  Bought him a Happy Meal, of which fries I ate most of. O_O Oh god I’m turning into my dad hahahaha I used to get so mad whenever he ate my fries when I was a kid, and now here I am doing the same thing to Fighter. #noshame

We went to McDonald’s because I heard they were launching something called the Happy Meal Book Program.

Order a Happy Meal now and this is the ‘toy’ that comes with it.  It’s not a toy at all, but a mini book!

The one we received is about *jeng jeng jeng* elephants!  All books are part of the Watch Me Grow series by DK Publishing.

The book format follows a baby elephant from birth until it grows into an adult with all sorts of information about elephants written in a kid-friendly way.

I like it! Most age-appropriate books that I’ve found for Fighter so far are about groups of things – like numbers, animals, things that fly, shapes, etc so I always kind of doubted if Fighter really understood say, what a hamster or shark was.  But since Watch Me Grow focuses on just one animal it’s good for him to learn more in depth about one particular animal.

Fighter approves!

I also approve of this Happy Meal Program!

I love books and reading!  It’s a love that Fat Her instilled in me and Ooib.  I don’t think there was any point in my life where I’m not actively in the middle of a book (except for some stressful times in college lol where it was textbooks instead) and I would love to  pass on that love of books to Fighter and Penny.

I try to buy Fighter books now instead of toys.  He gets bored of toys very quickly anyway but so far he does regularly pull out his books from the shelf and bring them to me to read or to point out stuff to him. 😀  So the Watch Me Grow series will be a nice addition to our collection!

I’d always harbored a secret wish to start my own bookstore – with different or rarer books than those you’d find in MPH or whatever – or a cafe filled with books where people could just drink coffee and read. 🙂 But not very feasible because…. Malaysians don’t read. 🙁

In London or in Japan on the subway, I saw tons of people holding paperbacks or newspapers to read on their commute.  But in Malaysia where got?  There’s no reading culture here – the most you see people looking at their phones or sleeping on the train wtf.

Worse, according to a UN report, the literacy rate of Malaysians is at 93.2%, behind developed countries like Japan, Britain, the United States, Australia and Germany, which have literacy rates of 99%.

So I’m very glad that McD is doing this initiative!  Besides the Watch Me Grow Happy Meal series, there will also be activities like a story-telling competition, Book Time with Ronald McDonald and meeting with aspiring local authors.  More details and schedules can be found here.