Ang Prinsipe ng mga Ibon = The Prince of the Birds

Ang Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang ni Severino Reyes

by Severino Reyes, Frances C. Alcaraz (Illustrator), Christine S. Bellen-Ang

Bilingual (Tagalog - English) Filipino children's Book
The stories of Lola Basyang were published in a popular magazine, Liwayway, from 1925 to 1942. Besides magazines and books, the stories found their way in many other forms through comic books, radio, film, and television and brought joy to both young and old.
The stories are retold now so that through them, this generation, and the next ones, will experience this rich source of valuable lessons, history, entertainment, and other important facets of Philippine literature.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

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]

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: The power of love.

Lessons:
1) Don't go against your daughter's choice. If she is already an adult and she loves somebody, try to respect her choice.

2) Gerry Alanguihan was not a genius when he thought to write about men and chicken falling in love with each other in his popular book 2009-published book, Elmer. Severino Reyes thought of it first (at least here in the Philippines).

Delight and Pleasure:
Nice colorful illustrations because of the colorful birds and the setting is mostly inside the equally colorful palace.

Other Ways of Appreciation of Philippine Literature:
I found out from Anvil's homepage that there were only 20 of these individual illustrated books. Only 20 out of the 500 books included in Reyes' Ang Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang. Will Anvil publish more?

Out of the 20, only 5 are also included in the two-volume (12 stories each), that Tahanan Books released. I wonder how the two publishers chose among what Christine S. Belen submitted in her manuscript.

Also, the ending between the original story of Reyes and this illustrated version of Belen is different. In Reyes' original version, the bird that has already turned into a handsome prince remains as a human being and he and the princess fly out of the palace as human beings. In Belen's version, they both (including the princess) turn into birds before flying out. I prefer the original version.

Overall: True love as a theme is always nice even if the plot is unbelievably implausible.

[Aloja Sisod]

I want to read this book

[Veronique]

I think this is good story

[Trixaieja Archer]

I need to read it.

[A]

Beautiful illustrations!!!


Why i notice that titles of Lola Basyang’s books are mainly pointing to men?

[09995759703]

nice

[Teddy De vera]

goof

[Jerz]

A

[Gladys Anner]

it so fantastic and iam so amaze...hindi ako madalas manood ng theatro pero ng nabasa ko ito napa wow talaga ako..

[Charlie]

for my project

[Berlyn]

https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit...

[Criselle]

its interesting

[Zack Tyron]

Its fantastic and beautiful story