Remember when reading meant more than checking one’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts?

Thankfully, many people still make time to read whole books, knowing the truth of what Katie M wrote on @betterbybooks: “Books let you fight dragons, meet the love of your life, travel to faraway lands and laugh alongside friends, all within their pages. They’re an escape that brings you home.”

As part of PBS Hawai‘i’s GET CAUGHT READING multimedia initiative, which is launching this month, we’re asking adults and children to read a favorite passage to fellow Island residents.

“How do I pick?” is a typical response. “I have a lot of favorite books.” These are words we love to hear at this educational media organization!

Here’s a sampling of the excerpts that Hawai‘i citizens chose to GET CAUGHT READING:

Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard spoke up for the little guy in picking Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss, with Horton musing that there just may be a tiny person atop a speck of dust:

“Some sort of a creature of a very small size, too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes…some poor person who’s shaking with fear that he’ll blow in the pool! He has no way to steer! I’ll just have to save him, because, after all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Activist and poet Mahealani Wendt of Hāna, Maui read from her own poem, “Voyage,” inspired by the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a:

“We are brothers in a vast blue heaven, windswept kindred souls at sea. We are the sons of vast night, planets brilliant and obscure, illimitable stars and somnolent moon. We have loved lash and sail, shrill winds and calm, heavy winds driven in squalls over turbulent seas. We have lashed our hearts to souls of islands, joined spirits with birds rising to splendor in a gold acquiescence of sun. We are voyagers and sons of voyagers, our hands working the cordage of peace.”

University of Hawai‘i Men’s Basketball Head Coach Eran Ganot read The Stonecutter’s Credo by Jacob Riis:

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. But at the hundred-and-first blow, it will split in two. And I know it was not the blow that did it…but all that had gone before.”

We invite you to listen to words of life and imagination and power on PBS Hawai‘i and pbshawaii.org. Join us at read-aloud events at public libraries. And find joy as you GET CAUGHT READING!

Aloha Nui,