Ancient Hawaiians lived in a world where all of nature was alive with the spirits of their ancestors. These aumakua have lived on through the ages as family guardians and take on many natural forms, thus linking many Hawaiians to the animals, plants, and natural phenomena of their island home. Individuals have a reciprocal relationship with their guardian spirits and offer worship and sacrifice in return for protection, inspiration, and guidance.
Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian
Spirits is told in words and pictures by award-winning artist Caren
Loebel-Fried. The ancient legends are brought to life in sixty beautiful block prints, many vibrantly colored, and are narrated in a lively “read-aloud” style, just as storytellers of old may have told them hundreds of years ago.
Notes are included, reflecting the careful and extensive research done for this volume at the Bishop Museum Library and Archives in Honolulu and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. A short section on the process of creating the block prints that illustrate the book is also included.
Caren Loebel-Fried is an award-winning author and artist from Volcano, Hawai‘i. She has written and illustrated several previous storybooks, including Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian Spirits, A Perfect Day for an Albatross, and Legend of the Gourd, all of which showcase the ancient art of block printing. Her books have won the American Folklore Society’s Aesop Prize for children’s folklore and the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association’s Ka Palapala Po‘okela awards for excellence.
