For years, retired preschool teacher Haunani Miyasato was bothered by the scarcity of books for preschool keiki written in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Currently, only around 70 books exist, some of which are out of print. As a kumu and parent she knew that reading the same books year after year gets boring. The lāhui clearly needed more options.
To help fill this need, Miyasato has begun creating and publishing books for young children written entirely in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi through her company, Kaulana Mahina. The books feature simple sentences and vibrant pictures. Sentences are composed with blocks inspired from the hakalama, a tool to assist in the pronunciation of Hawaiian words.
So far, Kaulana Mahina has published four books: Ka Uhu, Ka ʻAlalā, Ka ʻŌhiʻa, and Ka Lehua. In 2025, Miyasato is looking forward to publishing two more books around Merrie Monarch time: Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne and Mele Wai.
“Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne is based off He mele no Kāne,” shared Miyasato. “It asks the question, ʻaia i hea ka wai a Kāne’ on all the pages on all the spreads and then answers it with lines from the mele. It talks about the sun rising at Haʻehaʻe.”
Before founding Kaulana Mahina, Miyasato, who has a degree in early childhood education, worked for 15 years as a preschool teacher at Keiki Steps with INPEACE (the Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture).
“Of course, because I was a preschool teacher, I would try to incorporate more Hawaiian language and Hawaiian culture into my classrooms. One of the things that was lacking were books with these concepts. So, I had to make them,” she said.
A mother of four, Miyasato sent her children to Hawaiian immersion charter schools (Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu and Ka ʻUmeke Kāʻeo) so they would have a more hands-on cultural learning experience.
To support her keiki in learning ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, she enrolled at Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani, the College of Hawaiian Language at UH Hilo. One of her classes was called “Ka Nohona Kaulana Mahina” taught by Kumu Henani Enos. The course explored traditional Hawaiian relationships relative to temporal and spatial time. Her enrollment in that class would become a source of inspiration and a turning point.
“While I was in that class it brought up so much more questions. I would go to Kumu Henani and ask him all my questions after class. It made me curious and motivated me [search for] anything written about the mahina on the Papakilo Database. I spent hours researching and I took all that information and put it on the pelaha (poster).”
The pelaha kaulana mahina she created became the unexpected genesis to founding Kaulana Mahina.
Initially, Miyasato’s sole intention was to create a Hawaiian moon calendar for her ʻohana. When it was finished, she took her poster to OfficeMax and printed a copy to hang in her house. But the response from her friends and family surprised her.
“Whenever friends would come over, they would be like ‘can I have a copy?’ It got to the point where the friends of my friends wanted copies,” Miyasato recalled. “When I posted [the poster] on Instagram it started getting even more interest. People had questions about the mahina, and I would answer them over Instagram.”
Ever the educator, Miyasato decided to put together a mahina workshop and tried it out with Hoʻokuaʻāina, a nonprofit dedicated to perpetuating the cultivation of kalo in Kailua, Oʻahu, and with Mālama Hulēʻia an organization dedicated to restoring the loko iʻa (fishpond) at Alakoko, Kauaʻi. Through these workshops, both Miyasato and the participating organizations learned more about the mahina and its impacts, and how to apply ʻike relative to mahina to their own practices.
“It was apparent that this was a need,” Miyasato reflected. “So, now we go to schools and organizations and teach kumu about the mahina through a Hawaiian perspective so that they can incorporate it into their curriculum.”
And so, Kaulana Mahina was born, evolving into a small business devoted to creating teaching resources from a Hawaiian perspective. In addition to providing mahina workshops and writing and publishing keiki books, Miyasato has branched out, offering a mahina curriculum kit for kumu, cards, stickers, and more.
One of Miyasato’s favorite ʻōlelo noʻeau is from the Hawaiian historian Kepelino: “Ahu kupanaha iā Hawaiʻi ʻimi loa – a heap of marvelous things in Hawaiʻi [and its] profound knowledge.”
A reminder that ʻike Hawaiʻi is rich with knowledge and full of marvelous things.
To learn more or to purchase books go to: https://kaulanamahina.com.
