PAGE Turner Publishing House is celebrating Jamaica's 50th year of Independence with its Jamaica 50th Anniversary Scrapbook — The Birth of a Nation which will be released in local bookstores this week.

The book is already available on Amazon.com.

According to Karl Larmond of Page Turner, "The book is a chronology of where we came from as an independent nation.

"We're ecstatic about this publication, not only is this a historical opportunity, but this is our way of contributing something literal and at the same time meaningful and time transcending," he added.

Larmond said the book is geared specifically at a demographic who were not born at the time Jamaica gained Independence from Britain in 1962.

The 'Scrapbook' chronicles Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus's first visit to unsettled Jamaica in 1494 to the present. Highlights include the country's triumphs in sports, the musical impact through reggae and contemporary dancehall as well as its numerous beauty pageants.

Larmond says there are some photos that readers will find particularly appealing.

Among them are the one pound and five pound notes (which were used before the country changed currency in 1968), statesmen Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante signing Independence documents in 1962 and singer Millie Small whose song My Boy Lollipop became the first million-selling song by a Jamaican in 1964.

Larmond said the 'Scrapbook' took several months to complete. Dr Donna Hope-Marquis of the Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies Mona and the National Library of Jamaica worked with Page Turner on the project.