What's My Name in Hawaii? is a multicultural children's story of a little Japanese boy's search for a name. He needs a new one because he is about to become an American citizen in Hawaii, where his parents have come to live from faraway Japan. When Toshio Takahashi first goes to school, he does not want to play with the other children. Like most beginners, he cries because he misses his mother and mostly because he does not speak or understand English. Language, however, proves no barrier in a child's world and soon Toshio is just another flower in the school called Na Lei o Ka Keiki, "a lei of children". When Toshio's citizenship day approaches, all of his young schoolmates wish to help him select an American name like theirs, to add to those reflecting their various racial backgrounds. Susan Iwalani Au suggests "John" and Lisa Ilima Santiago offers "Gaylord" because she has an uncle by that name. The final choice is a happy one for all most of all, to Toshio whose new name now reveals that he was born in Japan, but is an American citizen living in Hawaii, the 50th State of America

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