Fans pick 100 books like 'Ewa Which Way

With a sacred stone in hand, twelve-year-old Kino hides from bullies in an ancient grass hut on display at Bishop Museum. In a blinding flash, she travels back in time to 1825 and meets a young boy who is destined to become King Kamehameha III. Together they go on an epic adventure facing sharks, Night Marchers, wild boars, and more as they collect the four items Kino needs to return home. I love this fantasy story with Hawaiian kids as heroes because it treats Hawaiian history and culture as both magical and ordinary rather than sensationally exotic.

What starts out as a camping trip in remote Halape for a boy scout troop from Hilo turns desperate when an earthquake hits and their camp is devastated by a tsunami. The boys are scattered, and it’s up to Dylan and his nemesis Louie to reunite the troop and get them to safety. Inspired by real events that I remember, this book is a survival story about friendship, leadership, and teamwork that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

When sixteen-year-old Leilani and her father traveled to O’ahu from Hilo to try a promising but experimental treatment for her epilepsy, they never expected to be stranded in the middle of a worldwide geomagnetic storm. With tsunamis striking randomly, all modern technology broken, and facing food shortages under martial law, Leilani and her father have to fight their way home. Along the way, Leilani discovers that the one thing that makes her different may be the one thing that saves us all. It’s an apocalyptic page-turner centered on Hawaii’s ecology and traditional cultural solutions.

Raw and real, ‘Ikauikalani, is a middle grader who is adrift after the death of his grandmother. Through ‘Ikaui’s daily experiences, we see firsthand the effects of mental illness, drug abuse, bullying, and dispossession faced by the homeless living in Ala Moana Park. ‘Ikaui struggles to eat, keep clean, and fill his days. If he’s swept up by social services, ‘Ikaui fears a physical and spiritual death. But in the middle of his struggle, there are also remarkable moments of grace that allow ‘Ikaui to thrive. ‘Ikaui begins to discover who he is, connects his amazing gifts with his ancestral past, and heals generational wounds. It’s a thought-provoking story about the difference between being homeless and houseless.

Hawaiian Fishing Traditions celebrates famous Hawaiian fishermen. Fish was the main source of protein. The first story, by Moke Manu, tells of Kū‘ula-kai, who became deified as a god of fishermen because of his power to control fish. He built the first fishpond, in Hāna, Maui, to supply the chief and people with food. His son ‘Ai‘ai, featured in the second story, continued his father’s good work by locating offshore fishing grounds and teaching the people how to catch fish, practice conservation, and distribute the catch with generosity. Also included are the stories of other legendary fishermen and of battles with man-eating sharks. Two articles in the appendix describe the vast array of traditional fishing methods; a third article gives an anthropological account of the worship of shark gods.

Hawaiian Antiquities, published in 1903, was translated into English from the nineteenth-century writings of David Malo (1795–1853). Malo was a major scholar of Old Hawai‘i who spent his life among the courts of the kings and chiefs, where he learned traditional practices and oral traditions. His writings cover a wide range of topics, including cosmogony, origins and genealogy, social classes, geography (land, sea, and sky and clouds, winds, and rains), the calendar (seasons, months, and days), flora and fauna, fishing and farming, houses and canoes, food and clothing, sports and games, religious worship and observances, healing practices and necromancy, and traditions about the ancient kings of Hawai‘i.

Despite the scholarly title, this book is a highly readable account of traditional Hawaiian culture in Ka‘ū, the southernmost district of the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Mary Kawena Pukui (1895–1986) was a preeminent Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, hula expert, and educator. She was born and raised in Ka‘ū, a remote, rural area where the old culture endured outside of the Westernization of the islands. In 1935 she traveled home with anthropologist E.S. Handy to gather information from her elders. Their book provides details and insights about the district’s history and ecology, the legendary setting (gods and spirits), the extended household and kinship system, the life cycle of individuals, manners and customs, and the relationships between people and ancestral spirits and animals.

Bamboo Ridge Press was established in 1978 to publish the multiethnic literature of Hawai’i. In this selection the best of its first eight years, the writers, of various ancestries, celebrate their families, cultures, and traditions, but also the cultures and traditions of others—a Hawaiian poet writes about a Tang fisherman; a poet of Chinese-Japanese ancestry and a writer of Puerto Rican ancestry reflect on Hawaiian activism; a white poet features bodhisattvas and Kuan Yin while another dedicates her song to a Hawaiian musician. Native Hawaiian writers are underrepresented in this collection published during a renaissance of Hawaiian culture, but a year earlier, in 1985, Bamboo Ridge also published Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Sea, an anthology of Native Hawaiian writers.

When I was growing up, all I learned about my home was the year Hawaiʻi became a state.

My mother forbid me from speaking local pidgin at home because of the prevailing stereotype that locals were uneducated, unrefined, and not able to understand the complexities of the wider world.

Television and film portrayed people from Hawaiʻi as pagans needing saving from themselves, who drank and sinned themselves to death unless saved by white foreigners. In more ways than one, the loss of the Hawaiian Kingdom was placed on the shoulders of leaders too weak and simple-minded to maintain and protect it.

Hawai’i’s Story challenges that. Written by Queen Liliʻiuokalani after she was imprisoned and overthrown by a group backed by U.S. Marines and intended to aid in the fight against annexation, this memoir reveals a Hawaiian Kingdom that is the most literate nation in the world at the time and… show more.

Having lived in Hawaii for a decade, I find a lot of creative treatments splash around in the tourist waters but rarely scratch the surface of the rich and complicated layers that inform the culture. Hand’s attention to detail made me feel like I was knocking the sand off my slippers (flip-flops for you mainlanders) and about to enjoy some home-baked banana bread. 

That’s not to say it’s not a flat-out, great, spooky mystery, which it is, and its climactic ending might make you opt for a staycation. One of my creepiest real-life moments was walking on a lava field and having to turn around because I was overcome with the feeling that I should not be there. Hand’s novel captures and amplifies that unnerving chill.