"This book consists of four stories-- "Horgle and the King's Soup," for eight years old and above; "Horgle and the Spa Mystery," for young kids who know what a spa is (for obvious reasons); "The King of Pradise," for old kids and repressed adults; and "Trip to Heaven," for young adults and really old ones who love the Philippiens.
The first story was written for my children (very old now) and it won first prize in the Pamana Children's Book Awards in 1965. The second story in the next in Horgles adventures (1967), updated in 2005. The third Horgle stoy wasn't included because I couldn't finit it.
The idea for Horgle, the horse-eagle came from my then eight-year-old son Bey. As we were sitting in the carport with the dog at our feet, a hawk began circling the sky. Bey spotted it and told the dog (whose mouth was open, tongue hanging out), "You better close your mouth, White. If that bird sees you it might wonder, is that a cave or amouth, and swoop down and enter. And you'll have no choice but to swallow that big bird. And the bird will go down to your stomach get so frightened in the dark it will flutter its wings and flutter its wings until they come out through either side of your body." (That's how Horgle began but in between, we changed him to a horse-and eagle combination.)
The actual third story here is all about love. The fourth is a retelling of a Filipino epic about how the Manobos got to heaven. It came from the original chant researched by Elena Maquiso which she translated into English in 1977. There are three versions of it by her which I rewrote into a composite. In case you missed the title, this book is all about bad kings, which you shoud never be becaue the good heroes always vanquish them."
--Gilda Cordero-Fernando - from Amzon