Hawaiʻi-based author Vera Ari­ta has spent her life help­ing spe­cial-needs chil­dren to suc­ceed. Her chil­drenʻs books focus on Hawaiʻi themes and encour­age chil­dren to  delight in the world around them. 

Maha­lo, Vera, for allow­ing me to fea­ture you on my blog. For those who haven’t met you, could you please tell us a lit­tle about yourself?

Alo­ha all! I’m Vera Ari­ta, and I am a retired spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher.  I taught for 32 years, and then I retired from Mililani Ike Ele­men­tary in Cen­tral Oʻahu in 2016. I am cur­rent­ly a half time field ser­vice instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, and I help stu­dents learn how to be spe­cial edu­ca­tion teach­ers. I live in Mililani with my hus­band, Neal, and we have two sons/two daugh­ters-in-laws, two grand­sons and a granddaughter. 

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

I grew up in Waipahu and went to Waipahu Ele­men­tary, Inter­me­di­ate and High School.

Go, Maraud­ers! Who is your biggest supporter?

For sure my hus­band, Neal, our sons and extend­ed fam­i­ly! I also have great teacher and church friends who come out full force to sup­port my book signings.

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

In my teach­ing career, I always had a dream to write children’s books to share the love, care and life lessons I’d grown to appre­ci­ate. I believe the inspi­ra­tion also comes through my faith in Christ. My first book, All Around the Islands, came out in 2005.  I ded­i­cat­ed my first book to my par­ents, Bolo and Eileen Sone­da, because my dad was very ill, and Iʻd promised him that I would write a book someday. 

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

I think hav­ing kids learn about ani­mals or the sounds of the let­ters in rhyme is very reward­ing. My fourth book, Alpha­bet Huk­i­lau, was writ­ten on an iPad! I was just kick­ing around with the idea of a net catch­ing let­ters instead of sea ani­mals. At the back of the book there is non-fic­tion infor­ma­tion of the sea ani­mals since much of our con­tent stan­dards deals with read­ing non-fic­tion books. 

The chal­lenge for any author is find­ing a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny who is will­ing to risk cre­at­ing a book with your words. 

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?

Teach­ing chil­dren has been, and is, my pas­sion, and cur­rent­ly my pub­lish­er is con­sid­er­ing a count­ing book that is quite whimsical.

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?

Again, you have to find a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny who believes in your writ­ing.  I believe that in Hawaii, most pub­lish­ers have to cater to the tourist mar­ket for their books to sell. I’m hop­ing that my new book, which pro­motes char­ac­ter edu­ca­tion, will be in all schools in Hawaii and nationwide.

Do you have a web­site? Are you on social media? Do you do school visits?

I do not cur­rent­ly have a web­site, but I am on Insta­gram Vera­sonedaari­ta or you can email me. I do school vis­its where I share the writ­ing process and share sketch­es of how a book is formed.  I often browse through reviews on Ama­zon of my books and find it very hum­bling to get such rave reviews.

What advice do you have for aspir­ing writers?

Nev­er give up on your dreams. You have to reach out to many pub­lish­ers and not get dis­cour­aged. My pub­lish­er told me she receives sub­mis­sions near­ly every day, and few are picked up to be published.

Can you share a bit of your cur­rent work?

Alo­hasaurus is a sto­ry that I think many peo­ple can real­ly relate to.  It’s about a dinosaur who has no friends because he looks dif­fer­ent, and he sounds dif­fer­ent.  In many ways it’s like my broth­er, Mike, who, was socially“different.”  Mike was born with men­tal and phys­i­cal chal­lenges.  Sad­ly, Mike recent­ly passed away in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2022, so he did not get a chance to see the book.

In the sto­ry, a group of curi­ous and coura­geous chil­dren befriend the dinosaur, and in turn, he teach­es them ways to be kind and how to mod­el alo­ha. Through their new­ly found friend­ship, they name him “Alo­hasaurus.”

As a sub­sti­tute teacher, I’ve been test mar­ket­ing the draft of the book with stu­dents, and it has got­ten “5 star” reviews from them! I have even shared the book with some mid­dle school stu­dents, and they real­ly liked the sto­ry. Their encour­age­ment has been uplift­ing and so precious.

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

My third book, Ani­mals Sing Alo­ha. It is a phon­ics book that teach­es how to write and sound out the alpha­bets cor­rect­ly. It was a sur­prise because the draft was lit­er­al­ly writ­ten on the back of an anniver­sary card while I was in a Maui hotel lob­by on vaca­tion. I tell stu­dents that when inspi­ra­tion hits, you have to be ready to write!  That book has been my best-sell­ing book to date.

Most chal­leng­ing is Alo­hasaurus because it’s been on the back burn­er since 2007!  I wrote the draft on the back of ser­mon notes in church and always felt that this would be a great book; how­ev­er, the pub­lish­er wise­ly was wait­ing for the right time to cre­ate it — and now is the time!

What beliefs are your books challenging?

They chal­lenge peo­ples’ beliefs that you have to look and act like every­one else to be suc­cess­ful. The les­son to the read­ers is that you can be a suc­cess if you are kind to oth­ers, speak respect­ful­ly, work hard and are a team player.

What’s your expe­ri­ence with pub­lish­ing your books?

I learned that when you sign a con­tract, all your future man­u­scripts go to them first and if they reject it, then you are free to go to anoth­er pub­lish­er. Also, the pub­lish­er can edit your writ­ing if they feel it flows bet­ter a dif­fer­ent way. There needs to be trust that the pub­lish­er knows what it takes for a suc­cess­ful book; how­ev­er, there may be times when you must per­se­vere and not give up on a reject­ed book.

Where do you get ideas for your books?

It seems that dif­fi­cult fam­i­ly times pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion for me to write. In 2006 my broth­er, Mike, had a seizure and hit his head very hard and became brain-dam­aged.  While he was in an extend­ed coma, I promised to write anoth­er book and ded­i­cate it to him. Thus, Can you Catch a Coqui Frog was written. 

Authors write to per­suade, inform or enter­tain.  My books fall between inform­ing and enter­tain­ing. As a teacher I couldn’t find a book that men­tioned all eight Hawai­ian Islands, so that’s how All Around the Islands came about.  Alo­hasaurus men­tions dif­fer­ent kinds of car­ing for peo­ple and for our ʻāina.

Which char­ac­ters do you relate with eas­i­ly? Why?

In fic­tion­al sto­ries, I relate to the char­ac­ter who real­ly aren’t out­stand­ing, but through much deter­mi­na­tion and hard work, they are able to achieve a lot.  One of my favorite bible vers­es is Philip­pi­ans 4:13: I can do all things through Christ Jesus. A good exam­ple of this is that I recent­ly decid­ed to enter the Hon­olu­lu Marathon with three months left to train. I did it 10 years ago but trained for a year back then. With the Lord’s help, I can do it again.

Maha­lo nui, Vera! To con­tact Vera Ari­ta and learn more about her books, please fol­low her Vera­sonedaari­ta in Instagram.