McDonald’s® Singapore Shapes New Family Experience and Passion for Reading with Happy Meal Readers Programme
Partnering with world-renowned author Cressida Cowell, McDonald’s launches an exclusive book series and promotes storytelling in restaurants in collaboration with the National Library Board
SINGAPORE, 2 March 2019 – As part of deepening our commitment to families, McDonald’s Singapore is launching the Happy Meal Readers Programme to instil a lifelong passion for reading in children and further inspire fun moments of family bonding. Starting 7 March, Happy Meals will come with an additional option of a book that is part of an exclusive series written by Cressida Cowell, globally renowned author and illustrator of the bestselling How to Train Your Dragon series.
Promoting literacy in children from an early age builds a strong foundation for their intellectual development. To engage not just children but the entire family in reading, McDonald’s is collaborating with the National Library Board (NLB) to bring storytelling to restaurants supported by McDonald’s Family Ambassadors and NLB’s Junior and Teen Reading Ambassadors.
“As we celebrate our 40th year in Singapore, we want to create a new family experience that enables families to bond together in meaningful ways. With the Happy Meal Readers Programme, our bigger purpose is to help cultivate a love for books amongst the young and to encourage families to bond together through reading,” said Linda Ming, Director, Brand Communications and Customer Care, McDonald’s Singapore. “All this fits in with our aim to bring families together, making them feel more at home with ourhospitality initiatives such as table service and family activities led by our family ambassadors.”
“We believe that a good reading habit should be cultivated from a young age, to encourage lifelong learning. We are happy to work with a wide range of partners, including McDonald’s for the Happy MealReaders Programme, to spread the love for reading among children. We hope that more partners will support the promotion of reading in Singapore, through such meaningful initiatives,” added Raneetha Rajaratnam, Deputy Director for Content and Services at NLB.
Bringing storytelling to restaurants
Building on the new programme, McDonald’s has progressively introduced Guest Experience Leaders and Family Ambassadors at most restaurants, whose role is focused on delivering family hospitality and engaging families with table service and craft activities, thus giving families more time and opportunity to bond. These Family Ambassadors will also play a role in facilitating storytelling sessions in the restaurants, bringing stories to life through props as well as art and craft activities.
From March, families can look forward to weekly storytelling sessions organised at selected restaurants islandwide throughout the year. These storytelling sessions will be led by McDonald’s very own RonaldMcDonald and supported by professional storytellers as well as Junior and Teen Reading Ambassadors from NLB – a group of young, motivated individuals who are inspired to promote a culture of reading amongst their peers. Together, they will bring families an immersive and interactive storytelling experience, complete with engaging hands-on activities to end the day.
Limited seats are available for the storytelling sessions. Families who are interested are welcome to visitMcDonald’s Happy Meal website for more information and register with the participating stores.
The Treetop Twins Adventures by Cressida Cowell
The Treetop Twins Adventures is a collection of 12 standalone stories exclusively written for McDonald’s by Cressida Cowell, globally renowned author and illustrator of the bestselling How To Train Your Dragonseries and the author of the Emily Brown picture books. The series has been thoughtfully designed to resonate with both children and parents, making reading fun through moments together.
“As a children’s author and an ambassador of the National Literacy Trust, I love inspiring children to read. Partnering with a huge organisation like McDonald’s, through the Happy Meal Readers Programme, is a great opportunity to get books into so many children’s lives. I couldn’t be happier that McDonald’s are using their scale for good in order to impact so many different children’s lives.” said Cressida Cowell, author and illustrator of How to Train Your Dragon.”
Featuring a pair of twins who travel back in time with their scientist parents to the Dinosaur era, these books spark imagination through a series of educational adventures as children get to discover amazing creatures that once ruled the Earth.
Two story books from the Treetop Twins Adventures series will be released every eight weeks, exclusively at McDonald’s. As an added bonus, the book series will also be available through a digital interactive reading experience on McDonald’s Happy Studio app, enabling families to read together at their fingertips. Leveraging voice recognition and finger tracking, readers will be intrigued to unlock animations and hidden content as they uncover the adventures, while reading along using the voice-based features.