Pan Asia Publications, RM34.90, ISBN 978-967-466-726-9
Education, 2023

Spotlight A+1: Sejarah is in an unfortunate place, in that while it is not the worst Sejarah (that’s History in Bahasa Melayu) reference book in town, it is also outclassed by other Sejarah reference books.

The Authors

The publisher is coy when it comes to the six authors’ credentials. Online search suggests that Victor Anthonysamy and Mazlee M Amin are schoolteachers, however.

Design

• It’s pretty standard. Lots of colors to make things interesting.
• What I love about the layout is that the charts, diagrams, and tables are large and easy to read.
• While there is plenty of text here, everything is laid out in a neat manner in the usual two-columns a page style. I never get the feeling that the publisher is trying to cram as many things in as few pages as possible, and there is plenty of white space to let the eyes “breathe” more freely while reading the book.

Content

The content is not bad. It covers everything that needs to be known, so I never get the feeling that big chunks of content are missing and need to be obtained from other sources.

However, this book suffers from the fact that whatever it does, there is always a Sejarah reference book out there that does better.

• It’s readable and has a nice balance of text and illustrations. Well, so does Masterclass SPM: Sejarah, and that book offers useful extras like audio notes.
• It shines a more prominent spotlight on Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) compared to Masterclass SPM: Sejarah, but most of its KBAT aspects are as dated as that other book. Focus SPM: Sejarah has a more updated approach.
• This book is more generous than Focus SPM: Sejarah when it comes to the number of practice questions, but Success Plus SPM: Sejarah exists, and that reference book does everything better than this book and any of the other books mentioned here.

See the issue here?

Conclusion

• It’s actually a solid and very usable SPM Sejarah reference book if one doesn’t mind the dated approach to KBAT.
• However, it does things in a way that is comparable to other SPM Sejarah reference books out there, never really outshining the others in the process.
• The only thing that makes this book stand out over the others is its cover price. It’s the cheapest SPM Sejarah reference book in the market, so if budget is a consideration, this book is not a bad deal. Just note that its KBAT stuff is on the dated side. It’s best to get some past year exam questions (which aren’t very expensive) and practice on them to make up for this issue.