It also might be a first for the state Department of Education, which has no record of other student-produced books.

While students at the 'Ewa Beach private school Our Lady of Perpetual Help published the popular "God's Photo Album" in 2001, their literacy teacher Shelly Mecum wrote the text that accompanied their photos and captions.

In the case of "The Fish and Their Gifts," Kanu O Ka 'Aina teachers and artist Meleanna Meyer helped the students perfect their book, but the credit goes to author Joshua "Kaipo" Stender, who wrote it at age 12, and the nine students who created the artwork to accompany his story.

"The fact that the quality of work is so high really just points to how good kids are. Their talents are really underutilized," Meyer said.

"The Fish and Their Gifts" tells the story of a fisherman's son, Kekoa, who is swept to sea while picking 'opihi and rescued by the fish, who are rewarded with gifts of protection for their good deed.

When the book is flipped over it becomes "Na Makana a Na I'a," a Hawaiian translation of the story by Kamehameha Schools.

BUYING THE BOOK "The Fish and Their Gifts," by Joshua Kaiponohea Stender, retails for $15.95 and can be purchased at Native Books/Na Mea Hawai'i, Kamehameha Schools Kapalama Campus School Store or the school's Web site at kspress.ksbe.edu. The books also have been shipped to Borders Express and Barnes & Noble, and eventually will be available at the University of Hawai'i Bookstore, regular Borders stores and Bestsellers.

To the students, the project was schoolwork, but to school director Ku Kahakalau, it was a move toward expanding Hawaiian children's understanding of who they are and where they come from.

"There is very little written about the place Hawai'i by Hawaiians, especially when we're looking at children's books and K-12 literacy materials," Kahakalau said.

The absence of these reading resources and a wealth of artistically gifted students led the school to encourage its students to create their own materials.

"We really believe that, for us as Hawaiians, it's our kuleana to tell our stories," she said. "This book is a testament of what Hawaiians can do when we're given the rights and the resources to develop our own educational process."

Now a 15-year-old sophomore at Honoka'a High School, Stender said he modeled his tale after stories about Hawaiian place names.

He relied on research rather than real-life experience to craft his story, but his own close relationship with his father bears a resemblance to the relationship between the father and son in the book. "I didn't base it on that, but that's kind of how it is," he said. "We do a lot of things together."

That includes fishing, but Stender said eating fish — his favorite food — was more of an inspiration than catching fish was.

His fishing experience didn't save him from weeks of querying fishermen, searching the Internet and visiting the library to make sure he got the all the names and details about the fish correct. "I had to look up all the different names and make sure it was all right, and all the different characteristics of the fish to make sure I knew what I was talking about in the book," he said.

Even so, he had to go through numerous rewrites to make sure the research and wording was perfect. "I had to make a lot of drafts," he said.

But meticulous effort paid off, because the book was in excellent shape when submitted.

"I can say that we did virtually no editing whatsoever," said Waimea Williams, senior books/production editor at the press. "It was very clean."

Rather than just entertaining, the story demonstrates an understanding of Hawaiian storytelling tradition, in which stories generally have deeper meaning. In this book, a boy wants to follow in his father's footsteps but ends up learning a broad lesson about generosity, she said.

The art also demonstrates an awareness of culture, using only an indigenous color palette of red, yellow, black and white, said Meyer, who flies to the Big Island once a month to work with the students.

"The purposeful decision to color key the collaged pieces differently caused a bit of consternation earlier on," she said. The students originally wanted to use blue and green for the ocean and sky, but eventually adjusted to using colors that indigenous people could create from chalk, coral, turmeric, charcoal and dirt.

Illustrator Pua Herron-Whitehead, now a senior at Kanu O Ka 'Aina, also thought the book came out well, and might use some of the pages she created in the portfolio she will use for design school applications.

"We didn't think it was going to be such a professional book," she said. "As we worked on it, it just got bigger."

Stender says he is not fluent in Hawaiian but can read the translation — which is aimed at children ages 3 to 10.

"When I was little I would have liked to have something like this where it is understandable for younger kids," he said.

Williams said Kamehameha is committed to reaching the 60,000 to 70,000 Hawaiian children up to age 8, and this book is part of that effort. "The young children who are in charter schools, and also (public) schools, can really benefit from a whole lot more books with Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian language," she said.

"The Fish and Their Gifts" is the first in a series of children's books that will include other Kanu O Ka 'Aina titles, Williams said.

Stender, who is pleased with this first effort, advises other students to try to write for publication. He plans to keep writing himself. "I think it's pretty cool that I'm a published writer and I think it's good that since this book is published my name is out there if I write any other books," he said.

Kahakalau said the whole experience has been educational for the school, which originally saw book publishing as an entrepreneurial pursuit, but will not receive any profits unless the book goes into a second printing.

"We thought because we had a colored Xerox we could just be pumping these books out at least for our own use, and sharing with the other Hawaiian charter schools," she said.

It turned out that it cost $30 to print a single copy of the book. "There were some major miscalculations on our part about what can be done in-house," Kahakalau said.

The school then turned to having the book published, a daunting task for an unknown author and illustrators from a small rural school. Three years elapsed between when the school completed the book and when it was actually published.

"It takes a little longer, but the quality and the outcome is higher than we expected it to be," Kahakalau said. "It's good to have a hardcover book rather than something Xeroxed and stapled together.

"In that way it's really been beyond our wildest expectation."