I met Kamalani Hurley online years ago when I sold my first picture book and she was just beginning to submit hers. Fast forward a handful of years and Hurley who is a kanaka maoli (native Hawaiian) writer and professor emeritus, is publishing inspiring children’s literature that we all need to read. Her debut picture book Kaho’olawe: The True Story of an Island and Her People illustrated by Harinani Orme, was a Junior Library Guild Selection before it officially came out. It also won a starred review from the School Library Journal. I knew early on that it would be…
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I’ve been doing a lot of research for a picture book idea I’ve held for a while. Research was my job for many years. I worked for various organizations researching diabetes in youth, healthy aging and the criminal justice system for different parts of my life. But I find the most joy from history, particularly understanding my past. Belonging I was born and raised on Oahu. I’m Japanese American, so I never felt like I belonged in Japan, but I’m not from this land either. It’s a weird place to be especially in the times we’re living now. Listening to…
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Here is PII with my conversation with Kamalani Hurley. Check out the first post where she described her book on the history of Kaho’olawe. It’s something I didn’t even know and never learned in school despite being born and raised in Hawaii. In this second post, I learned even more. You’ll see that Kamalani is a wealth of information and you can tell she’s a natural teacher by heart. I am so grateful and honored to share her story and wisdom with you. Anything you wished you knew before you started writing for children? Not that I wished I knew…
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I am so excited to have Kamalani back on the blog especially to share her amazing book and all of her success and accomplishments. She is someone I look up to because she’s wickedly smart, extremely ambitious and knowledgeable, but also has such a good heart. I learned so much from our talk and I know you will too! Please support Kamalani by sharing and commenting on this post as well as preordering her book. Congratulations on Kaho’olawe: The True Story of an Island and Her People! Can you tell us a little bit about what your story is about? Thanks…
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My Climatebase fellowship has taught me so much. I’ve learned, for example, about companies that intentionally dumped toxins in the Amazon forest, killing indigenous people and the land. It’s happened multiple times throughout history so much so that there have been movies about it. Yet, it still happens. I also learned that most of us are nutrition deficient because our soil is depleted. An orange eaten generations ago has the same nutritional value as four oranges today. There were a lot of statistics, facts and tables that all end up with a pretty dire near future for us and the…
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Forgive me for this non-picture book review related post. But I recently started a new fellowship with Climatebase. It’s been a lifelong dream or shall I say worry about the earth that led me here. I nearly majored in Environmental Science, but I was never good at the left-brain stuff so I ended up with an English major, Ethnic Studies minor and later went to grad school to get my Masters in Counseling Psychology. This fear of the earth’s health never left, however, and only grew stronger the older I got, as I became a mother, and as natural disasters…
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Sometimes I Cry written by Jess Townes, illustrated by Daniel Miyares and published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, is a picture book that I wish I wrote. I say that a lot. But I have two boys who when they got to a certain age, suddenly believed it was not okay to cry anymore. Townes shows readers that it’s not only okay for boys to cry, but that there are a multitude of reasons why they would. That sometimes we cry because we hurt, but sometimes we cry in laughter. I love books that normalize emotions because…
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I am taking another class from brilliant teacher and author Natalie Goldberg. She shared a teaching about enlightenment as seeing something through to the end. This is what I have always grappled with. When one thing isn’t working, the temptation to move on to something new is so palpable. But even listening to her talk all the way through, without stopping to eat or while scrolling Facebook, is hard. It got me thinking about the entire writing process and life itself. How do we see through all of it, even the difficult parts to its very end? I started writing…
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I dreamed of saying that one day because in that miraculous future, I would be talking about Long Covid in the past tense. Something I overcame, and hopefully would never have experienced again. I’m happy to say that day finally arrived. For anyone interested in reading about what three months stuck in my room did to me, I documented the experience in an untitled essay for The Missing Slate’s Homebound issue. You can read the full essay for free here. I also recently accepted a Climatebase Fellowship so will hopefully be learning more about climate and the ways I can use my…
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I spotted this book at my local library and was intrigued. What does love have to do with the library? Love in the Library written by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura and published by Candlewick Press is a picture book based on a true story about the author’s grandparents. It is a love story within a greater context of the Japanese incarceration camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. This hits home for me as a fifth generation Japanese American born and raised in Hawaii. My grandmother lived through gas mask drills and my Kauai grandparents wedding anniversary was on…