Mālo Hihifo

Saturday Movies Hele'uhila Tokonaki is about the fun of going to the movies in your village in Tonga last century. This book shares how the movies were set up and the ingenuity of local boys who always tried their best to sneak in without paying to watch. It tells the story of one teenager who created his own role as translator-entertainer, complete with megaphone, much to the enjoyment of the audience. Movies came to Tonga after the WWII with local entrepreneurs holding movie shows in villages. They'd hire a building, often the local school. Then they'd travel there, bringing along the films and all the gear they needed. For many years this included an electric generator because there was no electricity outside of Nuku'alofa. The book is presented in Tongan and English parallel text to support language learning. It is B1+ in the CEFR framework. It is presented in Arial font and with double spacing for ease of reading.

Getting my licence / Laiseni faka'uli is written in English and Tongan, presented in parallel text to facilitate language learning. This is the story of how one Tongan teenager managed to get his licence despite all sorts of unexpected problems when he was an apprentice in New Zealand in the late 1960's. These were the days when getting your licence in New Zealand was much less regulated than today. Sione Tapani Mangisi describes why he delayed taking up his employer's offer to teach him to drive and what happened when he damaged the boss's car in a parking bingle. The day of his test lurches from minor inconvenience to catastrophe with the testing officer an unwilling participant.