NORWAY – Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School students working on the 2008-09 school yearbook got a sneak peek at it Tuesday.

“I like it,” said Katy Emerson, a sophomore and yearbook class student, as she and half a dozen other students leafed through the 180-page, full-color yearbook that will be handed out to senior class students next week.

Until that time, the yearbook is under strict wraps, adviser Melissa St. John said.

St. John brought the students to the picturesque Lake Pennesseewassee rest stop on Route 118 Tuesday afternoon to have a pizza lunch and meet Alex Wilson, the representative from Lifetouch Yearbooks Inc., publishers of the yearbook, who showed up with the one available copy of the new yearbook.

Wilson, who works in conjunction with the photography and yearbook division in Gardiner, said he helps the students throughout the year develop the book using an online program the 70-year-old company offers.

Wilson said the students are able to take pictures, design, set up the text layout and proof their yearbook online. He also works hands-on with the students when necessary.

This is the second year the students have ordered all-color yearbooks. “They were able to do an all-color book for less than the cost of a black-and-white yearbook,” he said.

The cost for the full-color books is $33,000. The students raised 100 percent of the money through their sale of ads to local businesses, parents and others, plus the sale of the yearbooks.

“They work really hard,” said St. John.

The students apply for the class and meet two or three days each week for the entire year planning and creating their yearbook. The work involves not only creating the yearbook, the students must also go out and sell ads.

“They’re on their own,” said St. John of her students, “They stick with it and get it done.”

The students are now selling ads for next year’s book.

“I don’t want it to be over,” said yearbook editor Amanda Farrar, a senior from Paris, of working on the yearbook.

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