Abadeha: The Philippine Cinderella
Gr 2-4-Abadeha prays to the Spirit of the Forest for guidance to endure the unkind stepmother who heaps piles of work on her. The Spirit gives the young woman an enchanted sarimanok that is summarily killed by the stepmother and roasted for dinner. Abadeha offers the bird's feet to the Spirit, and is told to bury them on her mother's grave. Later, she returns to find an enchanted tree laden with jewels. A respectful prince finds it and takes a ring from it; his finger begins to swell and he cannot remove the ring. Of course, Abadeha is the one who removes it, marries the prince, and lives happily ever after. The illustrations are slightly stiff; often characters' eyes seem to be dark sockets with a resulting look reminiscent of textbook art. The text and art together provide an adequate, if somewhat awkward portrayal of Cinderella. For more successfully executed versions, try Rebecca Hickox's The Golden Sandal: A Middle Eastern Cinderella Story (Holiday, 1998); Ai-Ling Louie's Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China (Philomel, 1982); or Robert D. San Souci's Cendrillon (S & S, 1998), a Creole variant of the tale.Susan M. Moore, Louisville Free Public Library, KYCopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.