Nanea: The Spirit of Aloha

Sweet story. Granddaughter age 8 1/2 calls me during week to read. Has toRead 10 minutes/d. It’s great for her level and a bit of a challenge also. She loves learning some Hawaiian words also. Highly recommend!

I’m happyGood book

Great for 8 year old.

My daughter likes the new illustrations but they are few and far between. This book does not have as many illustrations as the new Rebecca book so it does not feel like much was added. Considering how many pages were taken out of this version of the story I do not think this was a good move by American Girl. The original book from 2017 had 21 chapters and 216 pages but this new abridged version has 17 chapters and 132 pages which is obviously disappointing. I read the original version of this series aloud to my daughter when it was first published when she was only 5 and I have been so impressed at how much information she retained that she is always bringing up years later when WWII comes up. Her older brother usually hates anything he considers girly and won’t listen to books I read to her but he insisted I not read the book to her without him because he enjoyed the story so much. The original was an excellent story that did a wonderful job of showing what life was like on Oahu before, during and after the bombing of Pear Harbor. Unfortunately with the huge cut of pages so much of the story is lost which is so unfortunate when it means cutting out the history that is vital to the book and the time. I thought it would be fun to have the new version of this book with the illustrations so my daughter could read the story to herself but I am very disappointed in how much content is missing and how few illustrations there are. We loved the original version so I would highly recommend that you buy a used copy of the 2017 version and skip this 2019 version.

Molly is my favorite American Girl character, so the World War II era being covered again from another point of view really interested me.Nanea: The Spirit of Aloha covers the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a girl living in Hawaii might have experienced it, but in a way that seems age-appropriate. For example, Nanea's dad and brother don't really go into a lot of details about the horrors they have seen. At the same time, very real things happen to Nanea, such as her family's Japanese friend coming under suspicion, losing her dog, suddenly having to carry a gas mask everywhere she goes, and finding out that one of her friends may be sent to the US mainland. Through it all, Nanea is trying to think of things she can do to help out. First she is motivated by wanting to win a contest, but, over time, she learns to help for a more selfless reason.I know the book is abridged, so maybe that explains it, but I found something odd in the book. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Nanea is worried about her dad and brother, who weren't there but left to help out. The reader is left wondering if they're okay or not. There's a major scene where she finds out about her brother, but one doesn't find out about her dad except just in passing (p. 62). It would have been a major event in Nanea's life to find out what happened to her dad after all her worrying, so I wondered if this detail was omitted when the book was edited down. There was also an odd point on the bottom of p. 98 where the book briefly went into present tense (likely a typo, but it was confusing).I didn't read Nanea's original books, in part due to being sad about the image-free design (Beforever, which American Girl is now moving away from). So it was wonderful to see images added to her stories. I do wish all the images were paintings, but it's still nice to see that kids will again get to read the books complete with artwork. Artwork adds so much to the stories and really brings history to life.