This is a story about a hapa (part-Hawaiian) teenager who moves to Hawai`i
from California with her much darker-skinned brother and her father.
Not only does she not want to go, but she has a terrible time adjusting
to Hawaiian society, in great part due to the behavior of the other kids
in her school. She is teased and even threatened because of her light
skin. Her father and brother, of course, get along just fine. But then
she discovers the Hula, which leads her to explore her Hawaiian heritage
and eventually become accepted at her school. McLaren tackles the
issues of racism and cultural elitism head on and does it very well.
She also gently and effectively introduces a lot of Hawaiian cultural
concepts without scaring off young readers. It's a great book for enhancing
cultural understanding and tolerance and for demonstrating the power
of Aloha.
One of the grandest of all of Hawaiian
sagas is the story of Pele’s journey across the islands in search of
a home. As the story goes, she originally settled on Kaua`i, but was
flooded out there by her sister Namakaokaha`i. She kept moving across
the island chain to the east, but was flooded out on each new island
where she stopped until she came to Hawai`i itself (the Big Island). Here
she still thrives today after having settled into a volcano so large
and deep that her sister cannot flood her out. (The modern ending
to her story is that she is building a new home for herself, Lo’ihi,
off of the southern coast of our island. She’ll have it completed
in about 10,000 years. Drat – guess we’ll miss the “housewarming” party!)
Nordenstrom’s book is a wonderful telling
of this story for children, but it’s actually equally appealing for
adults too. The artwork is fascinating, brilliantly colored and really
unique because it’s all collage! The illustrations are a mix of acrylic
and watercolor paints which were applied to large sheets of paper.
Then the artist / author cut out the pieces and arranged them like
a puzzle to form each illustration. The results are very striking. I’d
love to buy 2 copies of this book, cut out all of the illustrations,
frame them and run them around the walls of a room to tell Pele’s story. Oh,
I almost forgot – the writing is excellent too!
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