I find it funny (not ha ha, but interesting funny) when I look at a book and think that I don’t really want to read it, but then for some reason, it comes back up on the ol’ radar and then it looks like reading material (well, it always looked like reading material, but material I now want to read). Recently, when I was looking at new online readers, I found Pau: The Last Song of the Kaua’i ‘o’o, and this was the case. It was not until a second or third look (I know it was a few times) that it looked like it was readable (again, it was always readable, just something I now wanted to read). I figured the universe wanted me to read it, so I did.
And like many books that fall into this category, it was worth the time. Tony Piedra and Mackenzie Joy made an amazing story about how historical changes led to the extinction of a bird of the island as recently as the late 1980s. We start millions of years ago, when the island of Kaua’i is just bubbling up. We then go to each event (in a quick look) to when the birds finally arrived, how the first people came, how the Polynesian people brought non-native species, how they used the land, how then the first white settlers came, and so on, until the last bird song was ever heard.
Things are accented with a time/date at the bottom of the page to give you the general historical time frame. This can be hidden in the deeply dark colored illustrations that are just gorgeously done. They are detailed to busy levels, but they soften the intensity of why the bird will become extinct, but also shows what is lost, by not really pulling punches (there is a cat doing what cats can do to birds). There is additional background information.
Perhaps it’s not an OMG BEST BOOK EVER!!!, but it is in the Good Book! category. Due mid-September 2024.
