Review Detail

5.0 2

Punahou Blues

Young Adult Fiction 262

As good as THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

July 16, 2011 (Updated: June 06, 2026)

Overall rating

5.0

Plot

5.0

Characters

5.0

Writing Style

5.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

N/A

lticultural environment at Punahou School and you can see how getting along with an ethnically diverse student body helped him establish himself as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

Wright doesn't sugar coat the school experiences of the boy narrator. There are excursions off-campus into the drug world, skirmishes between haoles (whites) and locals in a rite of passage known as Killahaole Day, and then there's the tricky matter of interracial dating. Think Holden Caulfield in CATCHER IN THE RYE, only set in Hawaii. And this teenage narrator has a bit more moxie than Holden, especially when he challenges the school bully to a fight on the golf course during the Hawaiian Open.

Good Points

*Easy to read with good conflict between underdog narrator and school bully.

*Great FIRST KISS descriptions as the school carnival, with lips flavored by sugar from the Portuguese donuts!

*Interesting interracial dating dilemma between Hawaiian narrator and Korean girl.

*Realistic in sense narrator loses fight, but still gains respect.

Kirby Wright

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