Singapore Through Young Eyes

Select Publishing recently launched a new imprint Celestial. The inaugural title under this new imprint is Young Singapore Through Their Eyes. It was a real pleasure to publish this book.

The whole project was initiated by a group of four spunky young girls from Nanyang Girls' High School. In 2008, they successfully organised a writing contest for primary and secondary school students called "Your Singapore Through Their Eyes: A Literary Competition". That's quite a significant achievement for four 15-year-olds, but they didn't stop there. They persuaded Nexus and the National Youth Achievement Award Council to support the publication of a anthology of some of the works submitted in the contest. That's where we came into the picture.

We advised the girls to organise the essays, poems and plays along thematic lines; and to write an introduction to provide an overview of the themes and works. Clara, Dileen, Kay Yun and Ee Hsien did a fantastic job editing the works, organising the content and writing the introduction. They also roped in a schoolmate, Andrea, to design a beautiful cover. All we had to do was hold their hands along the way; they did all the hard work. It's a book we're all proud of. It's here on the Select Books website.

The book will be given away to the contributors, schools and National Library. Unfortunately (from the perspective of folks who might want to get hold of a copy), it's not for sale. Fortunately, we have 5 copies. We're not going to sell these, but if you want to take a look at what five resourceful girls can do, drop by the bookstore to check out our copies.