Wel­come to our lat­est inter­view with Native Hawai­ian and local Hawaiʻi writ­ers!  Author Dani Hick­man is the author of four delight­ful chil­dren’s books pub­lished by Island Heritage. 

Hi, Dani. For those who haven’t met you, could you please tell us a lit­tle about yourself?

I’m a mar­ried local girl with four adult chil­dren. My youngest, who co-authored two of my books (How About a Pineap­ple? and Tako Lends a Help­ing Hand) just went off to col­lege. My home in Wai­pio is still full with four dogs, one cat and one very fat beta fish. My day job is in Human Resources at a local adult in-home care service.

Where did you grow up? What high school did you grad from?

I’m a town­ie who grad­u­at­ed from McKin­ley High School. Go Tigers!

Indeed! Who is your biggest supporter?

My hus­band, Jeff, is my part­ner in all things. From rais­ing the kids, to edit­ing my writ­ing, to being my arm can­dy at author events, Jeff has always been my rock. He is a Kame­hame­ha grad and retired Nation­al Guard Vet­er­an. His feed­back and con­tri­bu­tions in my sto­ries def­i­nite­ly helps me add more “fla­vor” to any­thing I do.

Why did you become a writer? What inspired you to write for children?

I’ve always writ­ten short sto­ries and poems since I was lit­tle. Pub­lish­ing always seemed like some­thing that was too dif­fi­cult to achieve and I had no idea where to even begin. I had a co-work­er, Tam­my Paikai, who pub­lished a few children’s books and inspired me to give it a try. She was incred­i­bly help­ful and encour­ag­ing with all the behind the scenes stuff, like set­ting up for a book sign­ing and being resilient dur­ing the edit­ing process. I also LOVE her books. “Too Many Man­gos” is my favorite Tam­my Paikai book, so relat­able in Hawaii and a great les­son of giving.

What do you enjoy most about writ­ing for kids? What are some of your great­est chal­lenges in writ­ing for children?

I love the book sign­ings and read­ing at the schools! Meet­ing chil­dren and hear­ing them say how much they love the sto­ry is such a heart­warm­ing expe­ri­ence. My biggest prob­lem when writ­ing for chil­dren is my love for big words. Keep­ing sto­ries at 2nd grade read­ing lev­el and replac­ing “ver­bose” with “talk­a­tive” or “mean” in place of “mali­cious” is a chal­lenge. My kids always loved “big” words but my edi­tor has a dif­fer­ent viewpoint.

What are your hopes and dreams for the year and beyond in terms of your writ­ing career and what you would like to see pub­lished in the future?

I’d like to pub­lish a chap­ter book for teens with a Hawaiʻi sto­ry­line. Maybe even a Hawaiʻi graph­ic nov­el. I’d also love to do a sequel for my first book, Pono, the Gar­den Guardian. He’s my favorite lit­tle guy with a big heart. I have a rough idea of what I’d like his next chap­ter to be. Pub­lish­ing anoth­er adven­ture for him would be amazing.

There are not a lot of sto­ries for or by Native Hawai­ians and Pacif­ic Islanders. Why do you think that is? What do you think we can do the change that?

I agree that there are not enough Hawaiian/Pacific Islander children’s book authors. In my opin­ion, I think part of that stems from the Hawai­ian cul­ture itself. Hawai­ian is a spo­ken lan­guage, tra­di­tion­al­ly pass­ing sto­ries through chants, song and dance. The lack of a writ­ten Hawai­ian lan­guage did not become issue until the arrival of the mis­sion­ar­ies. Today, there seems to be a lim­it­ed group of tra­di­tion­al kumu who are per­pet­u­at­ing the cul­ture as they always have, through oral teach­ings. I think more in the com­mu­ni­ty are try­ing to reach out to kei­ki, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pool of knowl­edge­able experts with a pas­sion for writ­ing and a focus on children’s sto­ries is small. It may be help­ful to have more out­reach by cul­tur­al groups to encour­age kei­ki to put their demands out there for books and also writ­ing their own stories.

Do you have a web­site? Are you on social media? Do social media play a role for you as an author? Do your read­ers con­tact you? What do they say?

My web­site is sore­ly out of date. Iʻm also on Face­book. I been have slack­ing off con­sid­er­ably in pro­mot­ing my books in the last cou­ple of years. My focus was on my fam­i­ly and get­ting my daugh­ter set up for col­lege. Now that she is in col­lege, I hope to get back to it. I have got­ten email sent from my web­site, direct mes­sages and com­ments on face­book and my direct email. Most of the feed­back was through social media. A major­i­ty of the com­ments were around how much they liked the char­ac­ters. A few made wel­come cri­tiques of dif­fer­ent direc­tions the sto­ry could have gone. My favorite bit of feed­back was that I didn’t name the pup­py in How About a Pineap­ple? I pur­pose­ful­ly left out a name because I noticed many chil­dren com­ing to book sign­ings men­tioned that their dog was the dog in the book. I felt nam­ing the dog exclud­ed all those kei­ki with white dogs that want­ed to imag­ine their pup­py on an adven­ture. The dog is named Kea in the book descrip­tion but not in the sto­ry, and I still appre­ci­ate the comment.

What advice do you have for aspir­ing writers?

READ READ READ! Learn how oth­ers weave their sto­ries and devel­op their char­ac­ters. All those dif­fer­ent styles helps you find your own. Be open to feed­back from oth­ers, it can only make you bet­ter. Write about what inspires you. Don’t be dis­cour­aged — keep trying.

Can you share a bit of your cur­rent work?

The last book I pub­lished was a baby book, Rain­bow Friends in the Sea. I’ve always loved rain­bows and want­ed to write a col­or book for lit­tle ones. It’s a board book with a sim­ple rhyming theme show­ing the basic col­ors of the rain­bow in sea life. My favorite part of the book is a mir­ror in the end, because “You’re my newest Rain­bow Friend.”

Which of your books did you have the most fun writ­ing? Which were the most challenging?

Writ­ing How About a Pineap­ple? with my daugh­ter was the best expe­ri­ence. At 12 years old she was burst­ing with ideas and edits. It was a bless­ing work­ing with her.

My first book, Pono the Gar­den Guardian, was the hard­est to write. I invest­ed a great deal of my heart in that book, and it was too long. The text need­ed to be cut in half. Cut­ting some­thing you love down to its core was very dif­fi­cult for me but also a valu­able les­son. Great sto­ries can be a rela­tion­ship between the author and the read­er. Using few­er words allows the read­er to fill their mind with the pic­tures they cre­ate. The writ­ing is just there to point and to guide.

What beliefs are your books challenging? 

I think there are many sto­ries about heroes. I believe every­one can be a hero. You just have to decide how. My char­ac­ters aren’t “super,” they’re YOU in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. They’re YOU choos­ing to be a good per­son in a small, but sig­nif­i­cant way.

What’s your expe­ri­ence with pub­lish­ing your books?

I’ve had good expe­ri­ences with my pub­lish­er. Island Her­itage is well known for qual­i­ty and has a his­to­ry of amaz­ing works. I’m hon­ored that they allowed me to share my sto­ries and sup­port me as an author.

Where do you get ideas for your books?

I write sto­ries I want my chil­dren to learn from. I take a les­son like self-less giv­ing, doing what’s right and work­ing well with oth­ers, and I have the char­ac­ters show you why that les­son mat­ters. Inspi­ra­tion is every­where and in com­mon every­day things. Children’s sto­ries should shine a light on a dif­fer­ent way to look at some­thing, from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. It’s a great way to learn no mat­ter what your age. 

Which char­ac­ters do you relate with eas­i­ly? Why?

The char­ac­ter clos­est to me is Tako Lends a Help­ing Hand. Tako wants to help every­one but takes on more than she can do and ends up for­get­ting every­thing she’s already promised. Man­ag­ing tasks and time while work­ing with oth­ers to get things done is some­thing I think many peo­ple can relate to. Tako is an octo­pus, so it’s a lit­tle wish­ful think­ing to hope for a few extra hands on busy days.

Can you share a bit about your next book?

 I always have 10–12 books in dif­fer­ent stages at all times. It’s com­mon for me to put some­thing down for months and come back to it with fresh eyes. The book I have that’s a bit far­ther along than most is a sto­ry about not want­i­ng to go to bed. It’s got more of a nation­al theme, and it rhymes, which is always a bit more chal­leng­ing to get the rhythm right. Many par­ents can con­nect to a sto­ry of a child want­i­ng to stay up a lit­tle lat­er than they should.

Maha­lo, Dani, for shar­ing your man­aʻo with us! To con­tact Dani Hick­man and learn more about her books, please vis­it her web­site at thedanihickman.com.