IMAGINE a place where you can be riding a speeding surfboard in your bathing suit at noon and by four o'clock that same afternoon find yourself in warm skiing clothes, winging your way down a snow-crested volcanic peak. This is Hawaii, a gay and exciting land, where the most modern American customs and those of old Polynesia go comfortably hand in hand.

Little girls still dance the hula, but high school boys play the latest popular song from the mainland on their harmonicas. The traditional lei may be made of shark's teeth—or cellophane! Outrigger canoes dot the harbors, but huge transport planes fly overhead on scheduled trips between the Islands. Natives still wade along the shallow beaches and spear fish, but they fasten acetylene torches to their shoulders to light the midnight waters.

This book describes an ancient luau and the modern Pineapple Festival on New Year's day. There is a visit to a grass hut and a tour through a modern sugar mill. The legend of Madame Pele is included—and the history of the University of Hawaii. Between the covers of this book are the Islands which one day may become the Forty-ninth State of the Union.

From the dust jacket