BOOKS
Isle Pages
New releases from Hawaii authors
"Hawaii: Wildlife Viewing Guide"
By Jeanne L. Clark (Adventure Publications, $14.95)
This handy book offers full-color photographs and maps to assist the reader in the appreciation of the wildlife of Hawaii. The book includes 31 beautiful wildlife viewing sites; driving directions; contact information; tips for viewing wildlife; illustrations; available amenities, including trails, campsites, picnic areas and restrooms; and native Hawaiian names for most of the species.
"Mommy Teach Us to Pray"
By Theresa Talaro (Lifevest Publishing)
During a family visit to the beach, young Kumalani asks her mother to teach her how to pray. That's the premise behind this collection of thoughts and island images that celebrate the beauty of nature as "Mommy" explains various ways and reasons to offer thanks through prayer.
"The Oracles: My Filipino Grandparents in America"
By Pati Navalta Poblete (Heyday Books, $13.95)
As a young girl growing up in California, Pati Poblete was amazed and dismayed to watch her Grandma Fausta washing clothes by hand when there were a washer and dryer in the house. Years later, Poblete began to understand how much she had needed her grandmother, a native Filipina, to bring her heritage to her door. Poblete is an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Crowning the Nice Girl"
By Christine R. Yano (University of Hawaii Press, $24)
This book analyzes the half-century-old Cherry Blossom Festival, which has become a local tradition. Yano examines the pageant through its decades of development to the present within multiple frameworks of gender, class and race/ethnicity. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with CBF queens, Yano paints a complex portrait of not only a beauty pageants, but also a community.
