I loved this movie. We watched it a while back with our girls, and just enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s a great story about a girl wanting her grandfather’s love, and how she comes to earn that love and how he comes to realize her worth. And she learns to be a Maori chief and ride a whale (the girls liked that part). See it.

As a result, I was really excited to read the book by Witi Ihimaera. And, on it’s own terms, it’s a good book. I enjoyed learning the Maori legends, I enjoyed the language of the book. But, I had a few quibbles. The book’s point of view is from the girl’s — Kahu in the book, Paikea in the movie — uncle, which didn’t sit well with me. Especially if it’s a story about a girl who can talk to whales. The girl is age 2 through 8 in the book, too, and comes across as more of a mythic character, rather than a pro-active one. I think the point of the book was to focus on the Maori creation legend and to give the book a mythic quality. And I think Ihimaera succeeded at that.

But I think that by refocusing the story to the girl’s point of view, making her older, and making her more proactive rather than reactive the movie told a better story. It’s not often that I think a movie is better than the book, but in this case, it is. One last quibble, though this is with the library: they had this book in the juvenile fiction (ages 8-12) section. It’s not a juvenile fiction book. Not because of content or themes, but because of presentation. I’m not sure my almost 9-year-old would enjoy this very much.

All that said, I still think I’d like to give Ihimaera another try.