Pelangi Publishing, RM42.95, ISBN 978-629-498-156-0
Education, 2025

If you have been following my reviews of SPM reference books, you would know that I am not enamored of the latest iteration of the Pelangi Publishing’s Focus SPM line except for their Bahasa Melayu one.

Focus SPM: Chemistry still has the same flaws as the other Pure Sciences reference books in this line, but it also has some strengths that make it, at the very least, a better investment than Sasbadi’s Masterclass SPM: Chemistry. This is because it feels more in tune with the present day SPM Chemistry paper, while the latter feels like a dated book from 10 years ago repackaged with a new cover and design.

Authors

Three of the authors are Guru Cemerlang, while Lim Eng Wah had been authoring Chemistry books all the way back to my time in secondary school. Not to date myself but that’s a long time!

Design

The design is pretty standard for the Focus SPM line, but this is where I have some extra issues.

• The use of color is way too garish for my liking. This book is printed on thin, yellowish paper, and the colors as a result appear too bright, too much. The red headers appear really red, for example.
• Place black text over such garishly bright color and it becomes hard to make out what the text is saying! My eyeballs feel like they are on fire after looking at all the bright garish red and orange in this book for so long.
• Also, whoever designed the book really doesn’t like contrast, so we have images of molecules close together in red and yellow or orange and red. As a result, it is hard to tell the different colors and hence molecules apart.
• Making matters worse is that the illustrations, like those in Masterclass SPM: Chemistry, are on the small side, so there should have been more contrasting colors used to make these illustrations easier to figure out.

A Closer Look at the Content

Still, candidates with super sharp eyesight or don’t mind using a magnifying glass now and then may appreciate the fact that the text part of the content is solid.

Aside from the usual standard reference notes, there are helpful boxes to spotlight important concepts and common mistakes made by candidates, as well as to highlight tips on how to approach certain calculation problems.

However, the cluttered design can at the same time make it difficult to locate quickly certain information on a topic, so it may be helpful to make one’s own bookmark system while using this book for their revision.

On my part, however, the hideous colors and small, hard to make out images ruin my mood considerably. This issue could be divisive, so I’d suggest browsing through this book in a bookstore first, instead of just ordering it online unseen, to see if the color scheme and images are more to one’s liking before buying it.

How about the KBAT?

As I’ve mentioned in my review of Masterclass SPM: Chemistry, the Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) questions for this subject tend to be routine Chemistry questions anyway, because this subject has been making candidates analyze, deduce, and calculate things even before these types of questions are formalized as KBAT questions.

Now, Focus SPM: Chemistry has a stronger focus on KBAT than Masterclass SPM: Chemistry, and I notice that the answers to some of the trickier KBAT questions are quietly seeded throughout the book.

Also, I like how instead of just throwing to the candidate’s face how certain chemistry principles is applied to real life situations and leave it at that, the authors occasionally take the extra effort to point out the chemical processes involved, what substances are converted into what under what conditions, and so on. The KBAT stuff here doesn’t feel perfunctory.

However, occasionally the actual SPM Chemistry will throw some questions that will catch the candidate off guard, and I’m afraid the content of this book will not provide direct answers to such questions. This is because the content is still strictly within the realm of the textbook, never truly bringing up things that will let candidates put everything they have learned in a chapter into one big picture, if I am making sense here.

Here’s an example. In the 2022 paper, the compulsory essay question involves a segment that features two methods to produce ethanol, fermentation of glucose with yeast and hydration of ethene. The candidate is asked:

In your opinion, which method is more suitable to prepare ethanol and give reasons for your answer.

Don’t worry if you can’t answer the question. It’s worth 2 marks, so it’s probably okay to flunk it if one isn’t aiming to optimize their scores to make the cut for some scholarship or get a place in some competitive government educational institution.

The answer is hydration of ethene, because it’s an industrial process that yields a larger amount of ethanol than mere fermentation alone, and at a higher concentration too—unlike fermentation that yields a smaller amount, and one needs to take further steps to distill the resulting mixture to get more concentrated ethanol.

All it takes is a simple boxed paragraph to explain this and to let the candidate understand why there are two methods highlighted in the syllabus when it comes to preparation of ethanol. However, the authors are still set in the old ways and only present as much information as there is in the textbook.

In other words, it’s more KBAT-friendly than Sasbadi’s Masterclass SPM: Chemistry, but only if the actual paper plays nice and doesn’t throw a curveball that is too out there at the candidate.

Well, Except for the ROI Issue

Pelangi Publishing is really cutting down on cost, it seems.

• While this book isn’t as stingy with practice questions as some other books in the Focus SPM line, it’s still noticeably fewer.
• They don’t even include a mock SPM paper here. One has to spot the small QR code at the end of the content page and then access the mock SPM paper online. I presume the candidate is expected to print it out (that’s assuming they have a printer at home) for the “real SPM” experience. Why even put the candidate through this hassle after they have paid RM42.95 for this book? RM42.95 is not cheap!

Conclusion

• Presentation and design are pretty unappealing to me. This is subjective, I know. Some candidates may not mind at all.
• The content is pretty standard and can help a candidate grasp the fundamentals.
• However, the KBAT features are still mostly entrenched in what is in the textbook, so one may still encounter something in the actual SPM paper that can leave them stumped.
• Should one get this book? Well, if they are die-hard Team Pelangi fans, I suppose. This is a spoiler, but I will be reviewing two more SPM Chemistry reference books in the coming days, and in my opinion, they are much better than this book. Each has its flaws too, but those flaws are not covered by this book, so I’d say get one of those instead!