Kamehameha Publishing’s “Hānau ka Ua: Hawaiian Rain Names” was honored with the Samuel M. Kamakau Award for Hawaiʻi Book of the Year, presented by the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers Association, at the 2017 Ka Palapala Poʻokela book awards gathering.
“Hānau ka Ua” was written by kumu hula and KS Kapālama social studies teacher Collette Leimomi Akana, along with her daughter, and Kamehameha Publishing Hawaiian language specialist Kiele Gonzalez. It was designed by award-winning Barbara Pope Book Design and features illustrations by Hilo designer Sig Zane.
The book also won top honors in the “Excellence in Text or Reference” category, along with honorable mention in “Hawaiian Language, Culture and History.”
The book draws on oral tradition and literature, including approximately 300 Hawaiian language primary sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The judges praised it as a “superb reference sure to have a special place on many bookshelves,” and as a “beautifully designed and much needed collection of rain names that will serve as a resource for Hawaiians to reconnect to generational knowledge about their environment.”
They noted the “juxtaposition between Zane’s images and the rain names create an aesthetically beautiful book that illustrates the poetic meanings imbued in the names of rain.”
Also honored at the 2017 Ka Palapala Poʻokela awards was Kamehameha Publishing’s “Native Hawaiian Law: A Treatise,” edited by Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie with Susan K. Serrano and D. Kapuaʻala Sproat, which earned an honorable mention nod in the “Excellence in Text or Reference Books” category.
“Hānau ka Ua: Hawaiian Rain Names” won the prestigious Samuel M. Kamakau Award for Hawaiʻi Book of the Year at the 2017 Ka Palapala Poʻokela Awards.
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