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It is with great pleasure and admiration that we welcome Hawai'i-born author Graham Salisbury into our Children's Literature Hawai'i Hall of Fame. Graham’s twenty novels for young adult and middle grade readers are set in Hawai'i, both during World War II times and in the present. Common themes running through his stories are family, friendship, courage, integrity and honor. His books have been chosen for countless awards, including top rankings from School Library Journal, American Library Association, Book List, Parent’s Choice, Horn Book, the Library of Congress, and the Scott O’Dell Historical Fiction Award. Here in Hawai’i, he and his storytelling are beloved by readers, librarians, parents, and writers. His Under the Blood Red Sun received the Nene Children’s Choice Award in 1998, and in 2016, he was featured guest in our Biennial Children’s Literature Conference. Everything Graham does is infused with love, caring, humility, and imagination, from making music, to writing, to his recent enthusiastic exploration of painting. Before Graham’s publication successes, many children’s writers in Hawai’i assumed that their stories could only be published locally, that there wasn’t enough interest in, or market for, Hawaii stories nationally. Sandy has joyfully shown otherwise.

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THE RUNNER

We were boys together, and we called him “Sandy”, which was a cool name for a guy growing up in Hawai'i.  He was a popular guy with powerful talents, and he didn’t know it. Instead, he saw his own reflection in the eyes of a strong, quiet Stepfather with hard edges.

Sandy was a runner. Like ancient runners, he served his tribe by telling us all what he had seen, and often that was what lay ahead. His talent was that he saw the things that were important to us.. Things like love that might be found. He ran ahead of us in his heart and mind, diving into streams of music, roadside romances and thundering blue mountains offshore. These were the things that captured our hearts, and we listened to our runner.

The genius of Graham H Salisbury is that he saw that his observations were important, not just recollections or accounts. He saw that the ways of the young formed paths that could be followed or avoided, and made critical differences in the journeys of those who followed. He cared deeply about that. His stories are his gifts that simply swell with his love for the young minds everywhere, waiting to hear from the one who ran ahead.

Bill Jardine

Kamuela, HI

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From Dana Hankins, producer of the film Under the Blood Read Sun

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From Dana Hankins, producer of the film Under the Blood Read Sun

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Dear Sandy:

Congratulations on receiving the 2026 Hall of Fame Award; it is very well-deserved!   Your books have provided vital role models for children and young adults navigating choices of decency, honor, and integrity.

Personally, it has been such an honor to collaborate with you on the adaptation of Under the Blood-Red Sun from book to screen.   As a first-time screenwriter, you were an invaluable partner—enthusiastic, humble, and deeply understanding of the choices needed to translate a story from page to screen.  On set, you weren’t just an author; you were a champion for our cast and crew, inspiring everyone with your eagerness to learn their different arts and techniques.

Your collaborative spirit and commitment to your Hawaii roots serve as a daily reminder of the local-style values that we hold dear.

Sandy, we’re your biggest fans and very excited that you are receiving this latest recognition.

With much aloha, Dana (Hankins), Tim and Mardi (Savage)

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From Baker Chapter of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans on the occasion of making him an honorary member in 2014

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From Baker Chapter of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans on the occasion of making him an honorary member in 2014

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From 2022 CLH Hall of Fame inductee Tammy Yee

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From 2022 CLH Hall of Fame inductee Tammy Yee

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I remember my first encounter with Graham Salisbury. It was at the 2008 SCBWI Hawaiʻi Conference, and I was spellbound. Here was an award-winning author, a local boy, bringing an authentic, multicultural voice to the national stage. Hawaiʻi was no longer just a romanticized, regional destination in children’s literature; it was a living, thriving community where characters had real depth, faced true challenges, and made difficult choices. He gave us characters who looked, behaved, and sounded like small-kid-time me and everyone I grew up with. Can you imagine the impact he made, the connection he built with keiki, when he spoke pidgin and shared hilarious stories of growing up in the islands? Graham, you have inspired a generation of keiki, and you have inspired me. For that, mahalo nui loa.

Aloha,

Tammy

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A TIME FOR TRIBUTE, BUT ALSO SOME BACK-STORY by Sue Cowing

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A TIME FOR TRIBUTE, BUT ALSO SOME BACK-STORY by Sue Cowing

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I first met Graham Salisbury across the country in Montpelier VT, when we were students in the Vermont College MFA-in-Writing program. We knew him then as “Sandy.” At the residency, he kept making the case to whoever would listen that young adult fiction was literature, too, and that we should take the writing of it seriously.  Just eight years later, Vermont College opened the first, and arguably still the finest, MFA-in-Writing for Children and Young Adults program in the country, with Graham Salisbury part of  its founding faculty.

It would not be his only first. At a writer’s conference, he got talking to a woman during lunch about his unpublished young adult novel-in-stories set in Hawai’i. That woman happened to be the now-legendary editor Wendy Lamb, and two weeks later, she made him an offer to publish what would become his first book, Blue Skin of the Sea. It was the beginning of a career-long twenty-novel collaboration between them.

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His second novel, Under the Blood Red Sun, is the story of Tomi, a Japanese-American boy in Hawai’i at the time of Pearl Harbor and his haole friend Billy. This book was a turning point. Graham wrote it from Billy’s point of view and sent the manuscript to Wendy, who said the story simply wasn’t working, didn’t have a heartbeat. So he got up his courage to try to see and tell it from Tomi’s viewpoint and heart. Not only did that become his best known and most acclaimed novel, it was made into a feature film in 1995. His series of young adult novels centered on Japanese Americans in Hawai'i in WWII followed.

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Set after Under the Blood Red Sun, these novels explore the effects of WWII on the Japanese-American population of Hawai'i in the 1940s.

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One day a delightful visit to a class of 3rd grade pranksters inspired Sandy to write for younger readers as well. So he created his light-hearted Calvin Coconut series for  middle-grade readers, set in his own boyhood Kailua neighborhood and school.

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Recently Graham has been writing memoirs, incorporating the childhood memories that have enriched his novels, but also his musing and reflecting on the creative process, and offering practical advice on dealing with untimely appearances of the haunting inner critic in us all that never really goes away.

So thank you, Graham "Sandy" Salisbury, for your classic stories, and for pursuing your gifts in a way that also inspires and gives to others, especially to the young and to other writers and creators. And yes, congratulations on your well-deserved Hall of Fame Award!

Sue Cowing, writer friend

Honolulu

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Graham Salisbury as a boy, courtesy Pat Godfrey

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"Will the Real Calvin Coconut Please Stand Up?"

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"Will the Real Calvin Coconut Please Stand Up?"