Gabby, are or were you ever jealous that your mum named her book series after your sister? Her reading taste ranges from trashy to atas (Malay for high brow).

Ms Teoh: They grew up in a house filled with books. I read for about an hour till bedtime at 10pm. My favourite authors include Carey Jones and Maggie Stiefvater (who writes werewolf novels). I also threw out scenes I didn't like as a mum, for example, where the girl was alone in the bedroom with a boy. I discarded 50 per cent of her raw copy and got her to rewrite for better storyline and flow. Ms Teoh: Yes, it fits right in with the young adults genre of teens saving the world, such as The Hunger Games, which is extremely trendy. Would you have published Run if it were not your daughter's work? Gabby: Tye are the initials of my name, Tan Yi En. Why did you write the book as Gabby Tye, instead of Tan? The two girls have dinner with their father every two or three weeks. Her younger sister, Ellie, 10, is the star of her mum's best-selling children's series, Ellie Belly, about a girl who speaks to animals and rescues a different one in each of the six books.

Organised by the Book Council of Singapore, the event is on at the Arts House on Feb 22 and 23. The teenager, who scores upwards from the 70s for English literature in school, will be co-chairing the Young and Published programme at the All-In! Young Writers Media Festival. It was a 'way for Gabby to work on a long-term project', says Ms Teoh, a former journalist, who assigned her daughter to write 300 words a day from the time after her Primary 5 examination. They hint they won't date you if you are not pretty enough.'īesides, in the last two years, she was busy writing her first book, apocalyptic fiction Run, published by mum's Bubbly Books firm. Gabby says: 'Boys at this age are very gross. She has not brought a boy home for at least half a year, says her mum. She divorced her first husband and the father of her two daughters in 2008 and married Mr Yong, 38, an editorial consultant, last October.Īny 'mystique' about the opposite sex for Gabby, 14, a Secondary 3 student at St Margaret's, seems to have worn off for now. Worse, it would force her to hide from us,' says Ms Teoh, 41, who consulted then-boyfriend, Yong Shu Chiang, on the matter.

'We knew that once we laid down rules like, 'You cannot be friends with boys', it wouldn't be enforceable. The three or four boys Gabby got to know joined their family lunches or hung out at the family's five-room HDB flat in Bishan, so mum could keep an eye on things. Author-publisher Eliza Teoh was 'uncomfortable' when her elder daughter Gabby Tan started her 'boyfriend phase' two years ago at the age of 13, but she kept her cool.

Eliza teoh books