MANILA, Philippines – When a princess puts on her star-speckled purple cape and dives into the rivers of Sulu, she carries with her not just a love for swimming but also the weight of memory and myth.
This is the synopsis of Ang Kwento ni Putli Mandi, the new trilingual children’s book co-written by chef Miggy Cabel Moreno and broadcast journalist Nelson Canlas, with illustrations by Marbin Macalino.
A more mystical sequel to Moreno’s first autobiographical children’s book Si Migoy, Ang Batang Tausug, the new book introduces Putli Mandi, a royal child named after the Tausug delicacy with a club foot who learns to find joy in the forest and water alongside mythological friends.
Once upon a snack
Like many alamat-esque children’s books, its tales of (mis)adventure belie its metanarrative as a dessert’s imagined origin story — one that transforms a beloved Tausug delicacy into a heroine who is sweet on the inside and sticky because she “values family.”
For Moreno, who grew up in Jolo, Sulu, the sticky rice cake with coconut coatings is inseparable from memory.
“It was part of my core memory growing up as a kid there, enjoying it for meryenda, as it is being served at our ancestral room in Sulu,” he told Rappler.
Turning the dessert into a character was his way of honoring that inheritance and extending it to children who may never set foot in Sulu but can still taste its sweetness in the story.
During the book launch at Gateway Mall 2 in Quezon City, Moreno cooked the delicacy for guests, transforming rice flour, sugar, and coconut into a concoction of culture and memory as children from the Philippine National Clubfoot Program and a local school watched on with hearty appetites and awe.
The dish, familiar to Tausug families, echoed in the textures of other Filipino desserts such as palitaw, kutsinta, puto. In this sense, putli mandi does what the book itself attempts: to highlight what is distinctly Tausug while affirming the kinship of flavors and narratives across the archipelago.
From Sulu, for Sulu
Moreno’s culinary career, given form, would take on no other shape but that of the Sulu islands. His work is scattered across distance yet bound by memory, each dish a forlorn but forward-facing response to the stretch between his hometown and the capital.
As the chef behind Palm Grill in Quezon City, he has carried Tausug and Southern Mindanaoan cuisine into the city’s dining rooms — not to erase the scars of conflict but to remind diners that a region is first and foremost defined by the lives, flavors, and stories that endure beyond it.
“More than that, it’s representation for me. Growing up and seeing all the negative things about Mindanao, it hits me hard. Because I want people to know that there’s a lot of good things,” he said.
The same principle guided the linguistics behind Ang Kwento ni Putli Mandi. Its pages are written in Tagalog, translated into English and, more crucially, in Bahasa Sug, the language of the Tausug people.
“It’s written in Tagalog to celebrate Buwan ng Wika. It is translated in English and, more importantly, Bahasa Sug, because we don’t want that to be forgotten,” Moreno explained. “It gives people hope that regional identity still exists. And there’s an opportunity for us to shine a light on that.”
At the launch, guests from Muslim Mindanao highlighted what the book represents: a tangible cultural artifact to be passed on to children.
As Alyssa Sahali Tan, a social entrepreneur from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, shared, “Ang kwento ng librong ito ay hindi kwento ni Putli Mandi; ito ang kwento ng lahat ng tao na tinatawag na tahanan ang Sulu.”
(The story told by this book is not just the story of Putli Mandi; it is the story of all people who call Sulu their home).
What the book attempts is at once simple and reformative: to let children encounter Sulu not as a headline but a home rich with flowing rivers, lush forests, ringing laughter, and families that love, worry, and feast, just as most Filipinos do.
In the folds of a cape and the texture of rice flour, Putli Mandi makes the case that stories move forward the way recipes do — handed over, lived again, and carried further by the youngest and most imaginative among us.
Ang Kwento ni Putli Mandi will be available soon through e-commerce platforms Shopee and Lazada. – Rappler.com
Angela Divina is a Rappler intern studying Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Ateneo de Manila University.