Adventures with Energy: Yee Jenn Jong announces science book for children co-written with his family

SINGAPORE: The Workers’ Party’s Yee Jenn Jong, a former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament, wrote in a Facebook post on Friday (Oct 6) that a science book his family had written together, Adventures with Energy, has gone to the printer. Mr Yee, whose background is in education and entrepreneurship, had written a book in 2020 titled, “Journey in Blue – A Peek into the Workers’ Party of Singapore”.

“A year ago, we were introduced to the Children’s section of World Scientific (WS), publisher for my book #JourneyinBlue. Our son, Harel had just left for Belgium for a 5-month varsity exchange. He was keenly interested in the sciences since young, watching science videos and reading outside of syllabus. We agreed to do this as a family project as joint authors. WS assigned us an experienced artist, Alan Bay,” he wrote in his post.

Adventures with Energy appears to be the first in a series and is set for publication by the end of this year, with Adventures with Forces and Adventures with Man’s Impact on the Environment, scheduled for publication by the middle and end of next year, respectively, according to the website of The Learning Grid, which Mr Yee owns. Ngoi Peck Yong, MEd, BSc; Harel Yee Li Ren, BEng (2024); and Yee Jenn Jong, MSc, MBA, are listed as co-authors of the series.

“Writing a science book for children turned out to be challenging. Over many zoom sessions with Harel, we figured how to organise the topics, how to storify them, how to inject interesting facts to pique readers’ interest to learn more and how to make complex concepts simple,” Mr Yee wrote.

Interestingly, he added that for him, physics is “special,” as it was the subject that he struggled with while in college and barely passed and wanted to downgrade at JC1. “There were too many formulas and I got confused which to apply. Then, we had a new tutor in JC2 a week before the first common test. It was our 4th Physics tutor – sadly we kept changing tutors, which made me struggle even more.”

However, when his new tutor, a Mr Yang “explained electricity using the analogy of flow of water, pipes and potential energy of stored water,” the lights came on for Mr Yee and he suddenly understood “how to derive all the formulas I needed for the topic.” To make a long story short, he topped his class at the common test after this “moment of enlightenment” and afterward found the subject to be a breeze. He was even offered a offered a varsity scholarship in it, although he turned it down as he was more interested in computing.

But the incident left him with a lasting lesson, he added, writing, “My experience taught me the importance to have understanding and interest in the subject.”

Mr Yee explained that the book series is based on the stories of the travels of three families (Chinese, Malay, Indian) and their class, led by Eurasian teacher Miss Brightly. “They learnt about gravitational potential energy in mountainous Bhutan, light and EM waves in sunny Gold Coast, nuclear energy in China, wind and motion energy in the Netherlands, geothermal energy in Iceland – the land of ice and fire, and more! The book ended with an energy rap to summarise the concepts. A singer-friend sang it and our interns made it into an animated clip.”

He thanked those involved in the crafting of the book and announced that people who are interested in availing of the 20 per cent discount on advance orders may do so here.

/TISG

WP’s Yee Jenn Jong’s book reprinted after just one week as bookstores replenish stock