1.
A Community Gift
A review of Dr. Luis P Gatmaitan’s Handog kay Isabella

2.
The rainy season starts in June and ends in November in the Philippines Storms often
cause flooding, and when there is flooding in the streets, dengue can easily spread.
Flooded Streets
Handog kay Isabella is a story about a barangay that gets flooded after heavy rain. In
the story, Aryn wakes up one morning and sees that the street outside their house is
flooded. Her mother tells Aryn that there is no school that day.
Sick Friend
When classes began again after a few days, a lot of the pupils in Aryn’s school were still
absent.Teacher Ligaya says that the absent children might still be cleaning their
houses that got flooded. But Aryn learns that her friend, Isabella, who was one of the
absent pupils, is actually in the hospital. She was sick with dengue and in need of blood
on order to get better.

3.
Helping a Friend
Wanting to do something to help her sick friend, Aryn asks if she can donate some
blood for Isabella. But her mother told her that she was not old enough to be a blood
donor. After hearing this, Aryn asks her parents and her aunts to donate blood to save
Isabella.They agreed, and soon most of the other people in Aryn’s barangay agreed to
be blood donors, too. Soon, bags of blood were collected, blood which Isabella needed
to get better.
Unity is the Key
The story shows that when a community member is in need of help and the other
members decided to work together and help each other, those affected members can
be saved. Not only did the characters in the story save the life of a young girl, they also
prevented other from getting sick.They all worked together to keep their community
safe.They started to have a regular clean up of their place to keep the mosquitoes
away. Aryn, her family, and her community have proven that unity is one very
important key in making a community safe from harm.