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.
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: Cowards will go nowhere
Lessons: 1) Never disturb the dead. 2) A man whose in love will do everything just to win the nod of the girl he is in-love with.
Delight and Pleasure: To get the amulet, Huwan as to bite a finger of a boy corpse when the clock strikes twelve. This story is scary for children especially because the illustrations are dark and blurry.
Other Ways of Appreciation of Philippine Literature: Filipinos are fond of creepy and scary night tales. When I was growing up in the province, my cousin used to call all of us small children in a room, turn off the light and tell us scary stories. It was fun but it made me afraid of the dark until when I was in my late twenties and about to get married.
Overall: This must be a good scary book for young children. Something that they can read during Halloween. It has no positive justification in the end. This is something different from the other books in the series.
The story centers on very handsome and very conceited, but very cowardly, Huwan (Polo Ravales). Huwan the coward needs to get an enchanted amulet to help him get Meling’s approval.