To Find the Way

When the time is right for sailing, the Polynesian voyaging canoe Ar‘i-ati-tai sets off from Tahiti for islands far to the north where no one in memory has sailed before. Passengers and crew crowd the decks and say goodbye forever to their homeland. In command is high chief and navigator Vahi-roa, grandfather to the boy Teva. Teva is torn betweem sadness and pride, and he is troubled by doubts. Yet he knows he must face the challenges of the voyage in order to learn his “grandfather’s sky”―the accumulated knowledge of many generations of wayfinders.

Will they survive the long voyage? Will the chants guide them to their destination? Will Vahi-roa’s knowledge sustain them? Or will the unknown swallow them all, as it did Teva’s father?

This story is the human side of a most extraordinary historical accomplishment―the voyage from Tahiti to Hawai‘i by the ancient Polynesians, who without maps or charts but armed with a vast understanding of sea and sky, crossed thousands of miles of open ocean. Told from the point of view of a child, To Find the Way is a story of courage and survival, of coming of age, and of learning to trust the ancient knowledge of a seafaring people.

Teva, a Tahitian boy, travels with his navigating grandfather and a group of settlers to Hawaii in this significant if flawed story. Nunes ( Tiddalick the Frog ) draws on the latest research to re-create the experiences of the Polynesian pioneers who crossed the Pacific hundreds of years ago, guided only by the stars. During the arduous journey, Teva helps to bail out the ship and learns about the waves and the stars. The voyagers triumph, though the elevated prose does not: "Through his tears, Teva looked up at his grandfather. How strong the wayfinder, how sure his knowledge. One day he, Teva, would know his grandfather's sky." In addition to its excessive length, the book is also visually uneven: Gray's somewhat restrained watercolors do little more than unobtrusively accompany the text, and the awkward layout creates barren, unillustrated stretches. Still, the story itself is a worthwhile counterweight to the flux of Columbiana, and may find a place in many multicultural collections. Ages 6-10.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.