366 folk tales from Malaysia !! (pictorial )

THis is the  fisrt of the new batch of book on malaysia  this year .and this book is the reason for buying it  .

Here is some background  on how I decided to buy this book and also look after for more related. earlier this year desperate in adding  some stories (tales myths etc ) for my daughter i also googled  for Malaysian  tales across the intenet (say: googling ). But as googling just 'Malaysian  tales'  yielded only a few lemmas . And also the book 365 folk tales from Malaysia .AS i could not   find something more i decided to buy this book .  After  2 emails to Utusan the producer i have not received any reply from them . After  chatting with a malaysian frind in facebook he suggested me several online bookstores.

The book together  3 other books books has been  very properly received here  in 4 weeks after dispatching . Cost of the book is standard of RM 50 (as noticed on the  rear of the book )or 11 Eu  plus 4.5 Eu  shipping. I think that this price  is quite cheap  for such as book considering that  is 300 pages A4 size with coloured in tho most of the book with many illustrations !


Now back to the book as it has too much interest : 
-Its size  is A4  with ca 320 pages wiih plastic front & rear  page
There are  about 378 stotuies in the book , one for each day

The design is as  follows :
-A listing of the  stories  each month including the region , inside a  nice frame

- a bonus story  for every month - this is 2 pages with a nice illustration (the man eating  story ie batu belah is shown  here )

- One story  each day  . 3- 4 stories  in the two page format and depending on the size of the story

- glossary on the end of each month with some english terms explained


For me this book is very simple  though  I found some unowwn lemmas  to me Here is an example on how i did: (with the hope that this small excerpt  does not have any c'l'opyright violations as we call it in Greece clopi means steal )

In order to do the translation  work faster i used  my tablet as  translator instead of using two dictionaries (Malay and Greek ) . I have previously installed  both  these dictionaries in the google translator for offline use. AS yo see below   in the picture here is also a mirror .This mirror reflects  the solar rays back to the book so hat the   shadow caused by my hand is illuminated . a pen of 0.3 mm  is usd for writing above te  unknown words.

It was  the first book of reading immediately after   receiving the bundle . Meanwhile there are some others (that  will be reviewed later ) that made made me  temporarily  stop reading it but aftert checking them  i returned reading it under a different  aspect as  it will be shown late in this article  .


I made several interesting statistical data on this  book: 

1. There are  some stores that seem  nearly identical . I found  one or two with  2-3 vesions
2. Ther are  nearly direct or indirect  vesions of Grimm's Aesop's  and Hodja's tales. These are  the stries: mawar merah (the known versio of cinderela G ), the geesekeeper (G), the jugde (H), Fox & Hen (E), 7 goats (G), rapunzel - this is just a vesio of version  (G), Clever wife (G), Wind and sun (A thought  is story is rather fake ), Liar shepherd (A), golden axe (?), and & cricket

3. Some of the stories as for eg man eating stone seem  somehow different fro what i already knew from internet search
4.  There are many tales  with direct or indirect  magic. We dont like to tell stories top our daughter . For this reason in  my  second reading session  i tried first  to filter out these stories  by marking them out .


As in result  i have stamped  with short comments over the book which storie are :

1.passing  ie clear from  magic  a total of ca 230 stories
2. so so stories   abt 30
3 negative  or  magic stories abt 50
4 not to rate stories  , remain
also  theer was  another 'tagging' as :
1 . intelligent stories   abt 45
2. animal stories ca 55  with 2-3 not passing the  filter
3. funny stories only 10?? tis includes  pak pandir the 'well known'   stupiid  of malaysia !
notice : although Siti  as i  call  my daughter has watched  nearly magic series from her only 2 and also from the TV there is Nick and ben ten are also aired , we try to  get rid  of them (i removed Nick from the TV channel list )


In this  huge story list i have found the  well knonw stories of Santubong , Si Tangang , Putih & merah , batu belah
........but i have not fond these: Ulik Mayang , Raja bersiong (there is a  illustrated book version ), MAhsuri, GUnung ledang , Si pelawak [the man who fought  the dragon without fighting him! ], Mayang sari  ,Hang Nadim (the swordfish attack ), Hang Lipoh  as examples !!  (and many stories with the mouse-deer missing )


This book can be previewed here in google books : (many pages deliberately missing)
http://books.google.gr/books?id=3eJeLEJ1f_MC&lpg=PA53&hl=el&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
I  like this idea Malaysians  do . You can test the book  before you buy . I found also many other Malaysian books this way


MY verdict : Although the book  is nearly perfect as a huge repository of Malaysian stories it lacks of some important  legends or tales . MY daughter  has a  special  interest  in this book as  it is designed  with nice colors . i use it in parallel  with ancient greek  stories .

Feel  writing  your comments here !