The Kampung Boy (Malay: Budak Kampung) is a critically acclaimed autobiographic graphic novel by Malaysian cartoonist Mohammad Nor Khalid, known also as Lat. The book, and its sequel, Town Boy, has been reprinted numerous times in Malaysia and abroad, and an animated series based partially on Kampung Boy was created during the late 1990s.

The Kampung Boy and Town Boy are two of Lat's earliest works detailing his life story. Lat's autobiographical strips subsequently became a common product of Lat's career as a cartoonist, continuing to retell portions of his life, past and present, in both the New Straits Times (which he works for) and compilation books.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Town Boy 3 Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today 4 Animated series 4.1 Episode list 5 References

[edit] Summary

The Kampung Boy is an autobiography of Lat centering on his childhood in a Kinta Valley kampung (village) in Malaya (present day Peninsular Malaysia) during the 1950s and early 1960s, including accounts of rural and family life, traditional family functions, Lat's early education and outdoor activities with the "Meor brothers", whom Lat befriends at a religious school. The book concludes with Lat's eventual departure from his village for a boarding school in Ipoh.

First published in Malaysia in 1979, the book has been reprinted 14 times as of 2008, with an American edition released by First Second Books in 2007, and also reprinted in Japanese. Interestingly, the American edition differs slightly from the original: a critical moment in the latter occurs when the protagonist is struck by his father in a moment of anger, the sequence is redrawn and toned down in the American version with the violence implied rather than shown.

[edit] Town Boy

A follow-up book, Town Boy, was first published in 1980 in Malaysia, and published in the United States on October 2007. The book recounts Lat's teenage years in Ipoh immediately after Kampung Boy, between 1961 and 1969, with his school life, his friendship with Frankie, a Chinese schoolmate who lived in a shophouse, and his pursue of a love interest serving as primary themes in the book, finally closing with Lat's meeting with Frankie at the Ipoh railway station before Frankie's departure for the United Kingdom to further his studies for an A-Level qualification.

Town Boy, with its standard use of English (as well as Manglish) and Malay, additionally features written Chinese and Tamil in several scenes where families of Chinese and Indian ethnicities are included. As is Kampung Boy, Town Boy has also been re-released in Japanese.

[edit] Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today

Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today, first released in 1994, retold Lat's early childhood as seen in Kampung Boy, but centers specifically around past times and activities among him and his family and friends rather than his early life as a whole. The book was intended to compare the quality of life among children in the present (1990s) and the past and reminisce simpler pleasures of his childhood.

[edit] Animated series

An animated version of Kampung Boy was made in Los Angeles by Matinee Entertainment in 1997. It was aired in the United Kingdom on Pop between November 2003 and August 2005.

The series features the adventures of the eponymous hero Jonny Kampung, a Malaysian stilt village-dweller, known to his friends as Kampung Boy. He is an expert sushi maker who travels the world providing sushi for restaurants in extraordinary circumstances. Accompanied by the nameless "little black dog", he continually thwarts the attempts of his nemesis Derechora (supported by his two henchmen Rik Eedles and Ged Harken) to ruin his sushi using their psychic powers. Kampung receives help from the mysterious "Col-Linn", a trumpet-shaped ghost, with a deep rivalry of his fellow psychic Derechora.

[edit] Episode list

1. Prawn Fishing
2. The Little Black Dog
3. O'Reilly's Restaurant
4. The Psychic Sushi
5. Col-Linn to the Rescue
6. Kampung Ping Pong
7. Concorde
8. Kuala Lumpur Shuffle
9. Derechora's Evil Scheme
10. O'Reily Strikes Again
11. Yvette's Taste Test
12. Poisoned in Svalbard
13. Last Cab to Danger
14. Sushi Picnic
15. Up, Up and Away
16. Derechora's Dance of Doom
17. Snail Mail
18. Where's Derechora?
19. Iceberg
20. Home Again
21. princes ana

[edit] References