Ang Sultan Saif

Ang Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang ni Severino Reyes

by Severino Reyes, Christine S. Bellen-Ang, Liza Flores (Illustrator)

A retelling of the story about a sultan who, disguised as a beggar, meets a poor but generous couple.

29 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Severino Reyes (1861–1942) was a Filipino writer, playwright, and director known as the "Father of Tagalog Plays" and the creator of the classic short story series, Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang. He was also one of the founders and served as editor-in-chief for Liwayway, a popular Tagalog magazine. The National Historical Commission of the Philippines placed a historical marker at his house, and a street in Manila was renamed in his honor. In 2022, Google honored him with a Doodle on his 161st birthday.

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the individual illustrated books that Anvil Publishing, Inc. released to make the reading of Reyes' masterpiece more appealing to children.

All these books have a standard prologue entitled "For Teachers and Parents" and this is what it says about these stories: "The themes (of the stories) are relevant to their (children) needs and from these can be drawn lessons, delight and pleasure, and other ways of appreciation of Philippine literature."

Let me see how this book fares (in my humble opinion):

Theme: Charity need not be confined to rich people

Lessons:
1) Give until it hurts. It's how much it hurts you to give something that you also need.
2) Be wary of some people who consider as friends. Not all of them can be trusted. Some of them are envious about you and will create and sow intrigues among your other friends so they all walk away hating you and siding with that devious ones who you have long considered as dear close friends. Trust me, this happens.

Delight and Pleasure:
This is like Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. The king and his chamberlain don pauper's clothes to test the argument of the king's minister that only rich people should do charitable works to less fortunate people.

Other Ways of Appreciation of Philippine Literature:
The illustrations are gorgeous. The setting has the Arab locale but modern influences. The king is called sultan and it is apt because the Philippines had all the sultans (rather than kings) prior to the coming of the Spanish conquistadors during the 16th century.

Overall: I liked the theme and the cool illustrations. I just did not like the implied gory ending. I think the punishment to the minister is too much for a child reader or listener to bear.

[Teejay · Rating 5 out of 5]

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