Samoan author Kenneth Chapman says his new fantasy book gives a character he never saw when he was growing up.
Kenneth Chapman said he loved reading series like Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, and His Dark Materials as a child. But he said those stories did not reflect the mixed-race Polynesian background he came from.
His new book, “Lonasei and the Mystery of Origin Grove,” follows an 11-year-old girl and her older sister who move into their mother’s childhood home. The house is a mansion filled with mysterious paintings created by a distant aunt.
Chapman told RNZ that the story places a Polynesian character inside a fantasy world.
"When you're a 10-year-old kid, and you're in love with reading, you're not really, or at least I wasn't thinking about representation and relatability on that kind of cultural level," he said.
