Keiki Stories began with a child who could become so lost in a book that he was once accidentally left behind in his fifth-grade classroom while everyone else went to P.E. For our founder, Nikhil Wong, reading has always been both his greatest passion and his favorite escape.

But as he grew older, he realized that the worlds he loved entering rarely included children like him. As a multiracial, bicultural child, he seldom saw families or identities that reflected his own. That absence left him wondering where, or even if, he belonged.

The gap felt especially striking in Hawaiʻi, the most racially and ethnically diverse state in the country, where multiracial children are not the exception. During his 1959 visit, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described Hawaiʻi’s “various faces and various colors mingled together like the waters of the sea” as “the face of the future.” Yet generations later, Hawaiʻi’s mixed-race children still have too few stories that reflect the complexity and beauty of their lives.

Keiki Stories was created to change that. Our mission is to create and share children’s books that center voices and experiences too often missing from the page. Through stories of mixed identity, culture, belonging, and the real lives of Hawaiʻi’s keiki, we broaden children’s cultural horizons, encourage self-reflection, and help more children feel seen.

At a time when stories exploring race, culture, and identity are increasingly being challenged, narrowed, or pushed out of view, this work matters more than ever. Every child deserves to recognize themselves in the pages they turn and to discover lives beyond their own. Their identities, families, cultures, and dreams are not merely worth including. They are worth celebrating.