If you've been around the islands for a while, you must have run into Peppo's Pidgin to Da Max (1981), its sequel Peppo's Pidgin to Da Max Hana Hou (1992) and the companion volume Hawai'i to Da Max (1992). The news is good. All three books are back in print or still in print… whatevahs, yeah! But it gets better than that, too.

Now you can get a package of the words from the pidgin books printed up on magnets. OK. Doesn't sound like so much, but it really is fun. Want to warn your husband not to steal the cookies you made for the church bake sale? Use the "cockaroach" magnet to hold the warning since that word means "to steal or sneak away with." Or go the whole way by just spelling out the message in Pidgin to Da Max magnets. By the time a haole hubby figures it all out, maybe you'll be back to save the cookies.

Everyone I show the packet of 500+ magnets to wants to borrow it, or take home a few chosen words for some purpose. Some people have begun to invent games to play with them too. For me, I don't know quite how I'll use them, but I expect my metal front door, the front of my refrigerator ("icebox" in pidgin, of course), and every other metal surface in the house is going to have words of some sort soon enough.

If you don't know the books, the magnets may not mean so much. So, here's what you need to know to get akamai about the books and to "no make a. (Don't make an a** of yourself) when you hear of them.

The first book is a kind of pidgin dictionary with words ranging from "act" as in "no act" meaning "don't show off" or "be cool" all the way to "zoris", defined here as "sleepahs." Douglas Simonson, aka Peppo, has illustrated the whole book with great and very funny cartoons. For zoris, the cartoon has a boy stretched out on the ground for a nap and another boy is pointing at the bottoms of his ratty slippers saying, "Wow, Dextah, yo' zoris went t'rough da war or wot? Get air-conditioning undaneath!" Maybe you have to be there, but I laughed on just about every page, including this one.

The sequel, the hana hou volume, is… well, ditto will do. Same thing only more so and maybe more funny too.

Hawai'i to Da Max is the same format-dictionary style-but it covers a little pidgin, all kine local food and events, and chicken-skin experiences.

All three books are great, but now I'm thinking of them as the background you'll want before getting proper use of the Pidgin to Da Max magnets fo' da icebox.
Now… if you really want to have some fun with pidgin, these are two great books. However, if you do read them, it's best to head the warning at the beginning: "A WORD OF CAUTION TO THE NON-LOCAL. If you don't already speak pidgin, …[this book] is not a tourist guide to pidgin. So don't try to speak it after reading this book. You'll just get into trouble." It's good advice.

Both of these little books are in basically cartoon format and present commonly used pidgin words in dictionary order (there's really no other way to do it). Some definitions are really short, like "HANAI - Adopted." Others are longer (which is another reason that pidgin is great - it's efficient), such as "LIKE: To want or want to. Haloe: 'May I have the pleasure of this dance?' Pidgin: 'You like dance?'" (This is another funny technique the authors use a lot; the "haole" vs. "pidgin" example.) Here's another one: "These belong to me, and I'd appreciate it if you left them alone" vs. "Mine, you!" While reading these books, you'll be quite amazed at the versatility of pidgin, even if you can't quite understand it yet!