AUNTY PINAU'S BANYAN TREE

A good idea miscarries in this drably told story of a hamlet in Hawaii. ""Shade for weary travelers, a shelter in time of rain, a home for birds, and a marketplace for those who want to sell their wares"": Aunty Pinau's banyan tree is all of these things to the people of the tiny village Ilikai, until the day the mayor decides to pave their road. Luckily a tour director from the mainland is on hand to notice the possible tourist attractions of Ilikai: a legend in the past, a treasure-trove of a junk shop, and black sand on the beach. The spreading banyan tree is allowed to stay on an island in the middle of the shiny paved road and becomes not only the village center but the tourist watering hole. Unattractive full and half-page illustrations in black and white detract from the scattered bits of local color which might have brightened the familiar rags-to-riches through tourism-and-circumstance story.