Pelangi Publishing, RM36.95, ISBN 978-629-498-102-7
Education, 2025

Focus SPM: Pendidikan Seni Visual—Pendidikan Seni Visual is Visual Arts Education in Bahasa Melayu—is to date the only reference book for this subject in the market.

Sure, one can purchase the cheap reference notes sold on Shopee, but those are at best pilfered or heavily modified from existing sources or in worst case scenario, done completely using AI with no one affiliated with or teaching the subject reviewing the notes to make sure that everything is in order. I’m not saying not to buy to buy those notes, of course, especially for subjects that do not have any reference books available like Pertanian and Sains Rumah Tangga. I’m just saying: buyers beware!

So, back to this book. It’s an interesting case study in that in many ways, it is as good as the textbooks, but in many other ways, it is worse than those textbooks!

Author

Pelangi Publishing is being coy about author Norhalida Jamalud-din’s qualifications or experiences, and I can’t find any clues online about this. She seems to be the author for the publisher’s books on this subject, though.

Design

This is where the textbooks outshine this book in every way.

While textbooks in Malaysia are infamous for how user-unfriendly they often are, with hideous designs and useful texts scattered all over the place, the Pendidikan Seni Visual textbooks for Tingkatan 4 and Tingkatan 5 are clean, gorgeous, full of white space, and packed with information presented in easy-to-read bullet points or short paragraphs. The illustrations and photographs are functional and very lovely to look at.

Those books look good, read well, and, assuming that the content is good enough for the SPM Pendidikan Seni Visual paper and the candidate won’t get any nasty surprises on the big day itself, actually work very well as the sole or core reference books for that subject.

This book, on the other hand, has its pages printed on thin, slightly yellow paper, so the photographs and illustrations appear either too dark, indistinct, low-res, and unappealing to look at. Unlike those in the textbooks, these pictures and photos tend to be too small to be of much use.

Content

Unlike the 2023 edition, the 2025 edition of this book swaps out the “quick reference notes” section prefacing the content for a small little preface of some sample Kertas 2 questions, the one where candidates would be asked to pick one out of six given scenarios and create an artwork based on the scenario, and an example artwork for each question.

Despite boasting on the cover that this book incorporates video educational materials—QR codes to those videos, in other words—this preface is solely presented without any video, ironic as this is the section that could use videos the most. Imagine if there had been videos showing step-by-step how the artwork is made, with voiceovers explaining each step. Those would be so much more useful than the canned advice here followed by what is tantamount to the author showing off parts of her personal portfolio.

Those works are gorgeous, of course, but let’s be real, candidates that choose to take this subject should already have some basic idea of how to sketch and paint, so such advice isn’t as helpful as instructional videos showing off tips and tricks.

However, those candidates would likely want to buy this book because of Kertas 1, that part of the SPM Pendidikan Seni Visual paper where they are required to answer 40 multiple-choice questions based on art and design theories as well as the history of modern art.

This is where the comparisons to the textbooks come in.

• This book has a few more extra information here and there compared to the corresponding chapters of the textbooks, but the extra stuff is pretty minor and can be easily located should the candidate do their own research outside of the textbook.
• On the other hand, it is also missing some information here and there compared to the corresponding chapters in the textbooks!
• In many cases, because the textbooks have an illustrator that create custom artworks for the content, the illustrations match the content better and are more detailed. For example, in the chapter “Seni Bina”, the textbook has a lovely illustration of a traditional Malay house with every part of the house labeled clearly. This makes the rest of the chapter easy to follow. This book, on the other hand, just throws the lingo and jargon at the candidates’ faces, and had they not read the textbook as well, they would most likely be lost for the rest of the chapter!
• The textbooks also have clearer, high-res illustrations, as I’ve mentioned earlier, so candidates can see better and appreciate the works of past “art legends”. In this book, the illustrations look drab and sometimes everything is too dark to make out the details clearly. Seriously, for a book on visual arts, Focus SPM: Pendidikan Seni Visual can be hard on the eyes!
• This book has one of my pet peeves: it asks questions about things that are not mentioned in the reference notes. Is it so hard to put such information in the reference notes, instead of hiding it away at the back of the book, in the section for the answers to the practice questions?

KBAT?

The SPM Pendidikan Seni Visual papers are closed, which means the actual questions are not released to the general public.

One’s impression on what the questions are like can best be obtained from looking at the trial SPM papers from top schools, which are sold everywhere these days. After all, one can reasonably expect that the teachers that are experienced in marking the actual SPM paper are from those schools and thus, the questions they lay down on these trial exams would likely to resemble the actual questions the most.

The practice questions here look similar to the questions in those papers, but this book doesn’t have that many practice questions in the first place to make a proper educated evaluation. That’s another strike against this book.

Conclusion

• If you’re thinking “Should I buy this book at all?”, my answer is yes if only because it will make you feel more confident and less anxious about being prepared for the Kertas 1 later.
• Honestly, though, this book costs about double the costs of the two textbooks combined, so if your textbooks are under loan and you can’t scribble in them, why not just buy your own copies of the textbooks instead?
• The textbooks are nicer to look at and are functional in every way this book is, and any extra information that is present in this book can easily be found elsewhere and added to your textbooks at the relevant sections!
• The money spent on this book could have easily gone to purchase those SPM trial paper collections so that you will get some practice at doing Kertas 1. Doing those questions will also give you a good idea of the information that you should know but is missing from the textbooks; you can then jot down the missing information into your textbook for future revision!