num_pages: 32
description: Pig-Boy is drawn from the stories of Kamapua'a a divine trickster-hero in Hawaiian mythology. Kamapua'a is a shape-shifter. In human form he is a handsome warrior. In his pig form he is a trickster who provokes the powerful.Sometimes he is a wild piglet sometimes a voracious hog rooting in the dark moist earth. Sometimes he's a monstrous boar with eight eyes and four tusks curled like the crescent moon. Ever changing this mischief-maker is a lunar animal that can escape pursuers by transforming into the pig-nosed fish (humu-humu-nuku-nuku-pua'a) or the kukui tree or the elegant 'ama'u fern (singed red it is said by the fiery wrath of the goddess Pele).Hawaiian mythology the ancient tales that celebrate the many deities of the islands was oral lore until the nineteenth century when it began to be transcribed most notably by G. W. Kahiolo in 1861. In 1891 the Kamapua'a epic was first published in Ka Leo o ka Lahui a Hawaiian-language newspaper.
language: English
title: Pig-Boy: A Trickster Tale from Hawai'i
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt