SM Book Nook sits in the middle of a working mall, but the pace inside it feels different. People drift in and stay longer than they meant to. A parent sits while waiting for a ride and ends up opening a book. Students pass through and grow quiet. A child pulls a book from a low shelf and settles on the floor as if the space had always been meant for them.
Shereen Sy watches this without interrupting it. She stands slightly to the side, listening more than she speaks, her attention moving from one small moment to another. When she answers, she pauses first, her left eyebrow lifting as she works through her thoughts. At first it can feel intimidating. Then it becomes clear she’s simply thinking carefully before she speaks. She doesn’t rush conversations and she doesn’t try to control how people use the space. She observes, and she prefers that the focus stays on the work rather than on her.
Shereen grew up in Singapore as an only child, surrounded by books that filled the quiet hours. “Reading was my companion,” she says. “Because I’m an only child, it became an escape. Like a partner.” She studied architecture in Australia, where she also met her husband, and later moved to Manila, into a country that felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and into one of its most visible families. The transition wasn’t dramatic. It was slow and personal. She spent those early years raising her children, finding her rhythm, and watching how life unfolded around her.
Motherhood came first, and everything else followed from there.
Reading took on a different weight once she had children. It wasn’t just about what she loved anymore. It became about access, about environment, about meeting children where they are. Her daughter gravitated toward books easily. Her son didn’t.
“He wasn’t drawn to words at first,” she says. “So we tried graphics. Humor. That’s what worked.”
She saw early on that reading depends as much on environment as it does on interest. “Everybody’s a reader,” she says. “You just haven’t found the right book yet.”
Those years were filled with observation. Watching her children, watching other families, watching how people moved through the city. The malls stood out. People didn’t just shop there. They waited there, spent time there, brought their children there. Spaces existed where people lingered but didn’t stay, and she kept noticing what could be done differently.
In Singapore and Australia, where she studied and met her husband, reading had always been part of everyday life. Libraries didn’t feel intimidating and books were simply present. So when the question comes up about Book Nook being placed inside a mall, the instinctive answer feels almost obvious. Was it strategic, putting a reading space in what many consider the natural watering hole of Filipino life?
She laughs and shakes her head.
“There was no strategy at all,” she says. “It just made sense.”
