The Importance of Waimea Summer
English 12
11 September 2013
The Importance of Waimea Summer
Over the first 2 months of school we have read a novel titled Waimea Summer, by John Dominus Holt. This book takes place in a small town of Waimea, a city in Hawaii known for its cowboys and ranching. In Waimea Summer there is one main character that is the books central focus and his name is Mark Hull. Throughout the book, Mark goes on a journey to find his true self and eventually his identity slowly starts to change from being a Honolulu city boy to a more understanding, more in touch with his culture kind of person. There are a series of key events that help shape Marks perspective about his family from Waimea and also his Hawaiian identity as a whole.
The first occasion where Mark starts to change is when he is watching the farm hands kill and skin sheep and he is nauseated from the acts. He gets really uncomfortable about it and explains it as “Flabbergasted my city eyes”(15). Mark is not accustomed to seeing blood spew out of a sheep because he usually doesn’t see those kinds of things back in Honolulu. The audience that I feel this book should be read by is anyone who is 6th grade and above. There are a couple reasons for this, the first reason would be that this is an easy read and there are words that are not that complex and would be easily understood by my intended audience.
The second reason is because there are a lot of important life lessons that could be taken from this book. One of the main things that I took from it was that ‘ohana is one of the most valuable assets when you are in need. When Mark needed to help his family pick all those flowers for the luau he did it without complaining and that showed that he is slowly adapting to the Hawaiian values of kuleana and malama. Another time was at the family luau. Cousin Fred and Mark were observing everyone at the party and cousin Fred pointed out his girlfriend Lepeka. She was dancing hula and he told Mark “she danced
11 September 2013
The Importance of Waimea Summer
Over the first 2 months of school we have read a novel titled Waimea Summer, by John Dominus Holt. This book takes place in a small town of Waimea, a city in Hawaii known for its cowboys and ranching. In Waimea Summer there is one main character that is the books central focus and his name is Mark Hull. Throughout the book, Mark goes on a journey to find his true self and eventually his identity slowly starts to change from being a Honolulu city boy to a more understanding, more in touch with his culture kind of person. There are a series of key events that help shape Marks perspective about his family from Waimea and also his Hawaiian identity as a whole.
The first occasion where Mark starts to change is when he is watching the farm hands kill and skin sheep and he is nauseated from the acts. He gets really uncomfortable about it and explains it as “Flabbergasted my city eyes”(15). Mark is not accustomed to seeing blood spew out of a sheep because he usually doesn’t see those kinds of things back in Honolulu. The audience that I feel this book should be read by is anyone who is 6th grade and above. There are a couple reasons for this, the first reason would be that this is an easy read and there are words that are not that complex and would be easily understood by my intended audience.
The second reason is because there are a lot of important life lessons that could be taken from this book. One of the main things that I took from it was that ‘ohana is one of the most valuable assets when you are in need. When Mark needed to help his family pick all those flowers for the luau he did it without complaining and that showed that he is slowly adapting to the Hawaiian values of kuleana and malama. Another time was at the family luau. Cousin Fred and Mark were observing everyone at the party and cousin Fred pointed out his girlfriend Lepeka. She was dancing hula and he told Mark “she danced