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Hülili: Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian Well-Being Vol.9 (2013)
Copyright © 2013 by Kamehameha Schools.
Extending Hawaiian Children’s Literature
Dominic Cheetham
Hawaiian children who want to read in the Hawaiian language have
a limited choice of reading material. This is a problem for children’s
rights, for language development, and for language preservation
and cultural pride, and a problem that has been tackled successfully
for other languages. This article describes the reading situation for
Hawaiian children and discusses problems derived from that situation.
It then uses the example of the Welsh language, an example that has
much in common with the Hawaiian situation, to suggest how the
development of a translated children’s literature in Hawaiian would
be an effective and practical route toward a living, vibrant Hawaiian
literature and language.
correspondence may be sent to:
Dominic Cheetham, English Literature, Sophia University
Chyoda Ku, Kioi-Cho 7-1, Tokyo, 102-8554, Japan
Email: c-domini@sophia.ac.jp