This colourful cover with a young boy and girl in the forefront is a distinctive trademark of World Book Company’s publications, and it first appeared on this set of Chinese textbooks in 1948.Primary school students would start their mathematics syllabus with Abacus, followed by Arithmetic. By secondary school, they would use textbooks such as Algebra and Geometry.World Book Company (the fore-runner of Popular Holdings today) was pivotal in the textbook publishing industry in Singapore. Founded in 1934, World Book Company started as a book distributor and publisher and their first retail bookstore on North Bridge Road. After World War II and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the company incorporated the World Publishing Company in Hong Kong to publish Chinese language books for the Asian market as the supply from China was cut off. In 1952, publishing houses were set up in Singapore and Malaysia to publish Chinese language textbooks.
