Book Review: Lei and the Invisible Island by Malia Maunakea

Native Hawai­ian author Malia Mau­nakea has done it again with book #2 in her Lei and the Leg­ends series for mid­dle graders. Her newest book, Lei and the Invis­i­ble Island, takes Lei and the gang on a some­times wild, some­times scary, but always fun and sat­is­fy­ing adventure.

Lei and the Invis­i­ble Island begins where Lei and the Fire God­dess leaves off. Just when it seems that Kaipo, her best friend and ʻau­makua, is safe, his pen­dant goes miss­ing. Now the race is on to save Kaipo from oblivion.

The ever-resource­ful Lei gath­ers her friends and takes the read­er on an adven­ture that is ulti­mate­ly indige­nous at its roots. Yet today’s read­er will find the sto­ry acces­si­ble because of its fresh, mod­ern take on tra­di­tion­al legends.

All of the char­ac­ters — Kaipo, ʻIlikea, Tūtū, new char­ac­ter Kaukahi — are very well devel­oped, but I espe­cial­ly love the char­ac­ter of Lei, who is total­ly lik­able as the hero the sto­ry. Lei is relat­able because she isn’t per­fect. She is a ful­ly fleshed out pro­tag­o­nist, a strong and cre­ative leader who must deal with doubts and dif­fi­cult deci­sions. It is clear that Lei has a heart and courage and is thor­ough­ly invest­ed to meet the dan­ger­ous task at hand.

I real­ly like that sto­ry appeals to young read­ers in the respect they are shown. The book deft­ly car­ries the under­ly­ing mes­sage of hope and for­give­ness that the read­er comes to nat­u­ral­ly in a fun and scary way that mid­dle grad­er read­ers love.

The authen­tic­i­ty in Malia Mau­nakea’s voice shines through. I love her local and kana­ka ʻoi­wi ref­er­ences which are woven like a lei haku through­out the book. The use of ʻōle­lo Hawaiʻi is tru­ly won­der­ful, and Tūtū’s pid­gin is spot on.