The First of Everything

Winner of the 2019 Singapore Book Awards Best Education Title

Sam Jam sat in a school library and challenged the school community to ask him about the origin of anything at all — and pledged to use library resources to answer within 60 minutes. Children and adults delivered clever, funny, unexpected questions: Who owned the first pet dog? Who invented toilets? What was the first song? Were the first newspapers really made of rock? And who was the first human, anyway?

Seeking answers, he and his young assistants discovered remarkable true tales:

• The tamer of wolves
• The tape measure that reached the moon
• The first instant message
• The man who took a picture of a sound
• The first newspaper — which actually WAS made of rock!

And dozens more remarkable true stories.

The result is a fun story collection about the origins of a huge range of things — which also introduces young readers to the art and science of academic research. In these times of fake news, information overload, and too much homework, the ability to conduct fast, accurate research is one of the best skills any student can have — and you can learn it in these pages.

Nury Vittachi has written more than 50 books, sometimes using his "outer names" and sometimes his "inner names". He is the author of more than 40 books, several of which have been published in many languages around the world. He particularly enjoys bringing science and history to life for readers young and old. He is chairman of Asia Pacific Translators & Writers, Inc., Asia's biggest association of writers. A lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, he teaches students how to write stories and how to create content for novels and movies.

Step Cheung studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York and character animation at Gobelins School in Paris.

Her illustrations are published in The Standard newspaper weekly and she has illustrated for McDonald's TV commercials, Cyberport, Hong Kong magazines and different types of media. She loves to use a variety of media to express her imagination. Her dream is to draw every day.