Big Bad Wolf Books Is Building a Nation of Readers, One Book at a Time

It's not a stretch to believe Filipinos are innate readers, just with unmet potential.

- By Andrea Panaligan

A few years ago, when I was a bored college student during the COVID-19 lockdown, I started posting about the books I read on TikTok, in a corner of the platform now nicknamed "BookTok." The fact that I found a community of like-minded people—both voracious readers and those who picked up the habit after being 'influenced'—convinces me that the inkling to read is there, waiting to be awakened.

If only the books weren't so expensive, or hard to find. If only we didn't spend so much of our free time surviving hellish commutes.

Big Bad Wolf Books, an enormous book fair that was started in Malaysia by Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng, is driven by the same belief. "Books are dangerous, books can change mindsets," Yap told me. As such, it became the fair's mission to reach as many people as possible, all over the world.

The fair was in eight different parts of the country in the past year alone, and in the six years that I have attended, their books have never stopped being affordable.

My love for reading now, and the people I found because of it, is largely thanks to a fair that never lost sight of its mission, even if it meant putting in extra work.

Big Bad Wolf returns to Manila until June 2, 2025, at V-Mall, Greenhills in San Juan City. During the fair's opening day, I got to sit down with Yap, the co-founder, and Lesley "Ley" Reinares-Almeda, project director.

YOUNG STAR: What's exciting about this iteration of Big Bad Wolf that readers (and non-readers!) can look forward to?

ANDREW YAP: Coming to a mall, one of the biggest advantages is that families can come here together, and we reach the majority of Filipinos who will not go to a book event. If you put it in a convention center, only those who love reading will go, but their whole family may not go.