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Petals of the Vanda

By Kurenai Tsuneko Hongo
2005, 122 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
In 1911 Kurenai Tsuneko Hongo left her native Japan and made Hawaii her new home.

Kurenai (her pen name which means crimson in Japanese) was a well-educated young lady that never lost her passion for poetry even though she lived most of her life in the small town of Hilo. In her later life, after her kids had grown, she rekindled her interest in tanka poetry.

Tanka (also known as waka) is an ancient Japanese poetry form, written in 31 syllables, and is similar to the more popular haiku poetry. Tanka and haiku are the ultimate minimalist forms of writing. At their best, they are both spontaneous and precise in capturing the writer's depth of feeling. Kurenai became a master of this art. Until now, few people beyond her friends and family knew of her great talent.

With the release of this book, you'll discover the beauty, joy, sadness, and faith that were a part of Kurenai's life.

For visitors and expatriates of Hawaii, this book's imagery, captured in the poems, will forever remind you of the beauty and wonder of the islands.

For those still living in Hawaii, Petals of the Vanda will make you appreciate all that surrounds you.

ORDER -- Item #3271, Price $14.95

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Wishbone

By Priscilla Lee
2000, 79 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
Pulling details from the fierce peculiarities of everyday life, these plainly spoken, courageous poems chronicle the life of an Asian American woman straddling two cultures. At a crossroads of family history and present time, the poems grapple with conflict, failure, and limits that are ultimately transcended and resolved-through acceptance, love, fate, and the raw power of poetry itself-into a wild happiness. The poems also celebrate the poet's source of strength, her great love for her grandmother: a wise, Buddhist fortune-telling midwife/seamstress.

ORDER -- Item #3011, Price $12.50

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Haiku
Asian Arts & Crafts for Creative Kids

By Patricia Donegan
2003, 64 pages, hardback.
Book Description -
YOU'LL LEARN TO WRITE:
HAIKU about Nature
HAIBUN (Haiku with short story)
HAIGA (Haiku with a drawing)
Renga (Haiku that you write with friends)

Haiku is a unique Japanese form of poetry that uses images from nature to make a statement or capture a moment. Haiku are short but powerful expressions - making them easy and fun to write and share with your friends.

The activities in this book will show you the seven keys to creating your own haiku, and will help you get started, think up memorable words and images, and write the three short lines that make up a great haiku.

With clear explanations and many examples, this is a great way to have fun while you explore this fascinating aspect of Japanese culture.

ORDER -- Item #3273, Price $9.95

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Homing Pigeon

By Wooi-chin J-son
2001, 66 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
Wooi-chin J-son's poems are a marvelous bridge between his native Singapore and the United States. He evokes his childhood stealing shells of wax from the feet of the Virgin.

He writes of a bamboo flute that is a "disjointed piece of bone...a hollowed spine." When as a child he coughed building a kitchen fire, he blew up ashes that settled "like frost" on his mother's "silk hair". He somehow connects the Susquehanna River to the jade of the Tang dynasty.

The poetry of Homing Pigeon brilliantly pulls two worlds together until we understand both freshly and poignantly.
- Benjamin Saltman

ORDER -- Item #3272, Price $10.00

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A Thousand Peaks
Poems from China

By Siyu Liu and Orel Protopopescu
2002, 52 pages, Hardback.
Book Description from Back Cover -
A Thousand Peaks introduces young readers to the art of classical Chinese poetry. China's poets have created shi, poems that follow strict rules about structure and rhythm, for several thousand years. Here are thirty-five shi from the Han dynasty to the modern era, in English and Chinese. Faithful but inventive translations suggest the astonishing beauty of the original poems. The accompanying text describes the world of these poets and the culture that inspired them. May today's young readers read these poems with as much delight as did previous generations!

ORDER -- Item #3009, Price $19.95

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Good Luck Life
The Essential Guide to Chinese American Celebrations and Culture

By Rosemary Gong
2005, 288 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
Good Luck Life is the first book to explain the meanings of Chinese rituals and to offer advice on when and how to plan for Chinese holidays and special occasions such as Chinese weddings, the Red Egg and Ginger party to welcome a new baby, significant birthdays, and the inevitable funeral. Packed with practical information, Good Luck Life contains an abundance of facts, legends, foods, old-village recipes, and quick planning guides for Chinese New Year, Clear Brightness, Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn, and many other festivals.

Written with warmth and wit, Good Luck Life is beautifully designed as an easily accessible cultural guide that includes an explanation of the Lunar Calendar, tips on Chinese table etiquette for dining with confidence, and dos and don'ts from wise Auntie Lao, who recounts ancient Chinese beliefs and superstitions. This is your map for celebrating a good luck life.

ORDER -- Item #3276, Retailed Price $14.95

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Origins of Chinese Music and Art

Compiled by Li Xiaoxiang
Illustrated by Fu Chunjiang
Translated by Y N Han
2002, 148 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
Let Origins of Chinese Music and Art guide you through the perplexing maze of all things Chinese. Pick up interesting facts about the "Four Treasures of the Study" - the brush, ink, paper and inkstone - which form the cornerstone of Chinese culture.

Be enthralled by the charming stories of Chinese icons:
• Cao Cao, who hinted that he wants a door widened just by writing a character on the door.
• Shi Kuang, whose music was said to resurrect the dead.
• Wu Daozi, who never ccompleted his painting for fear that they would come alive.

You will be amazed by the wisdom and exquisite allure of Chinese culture!

ORDER -- Item #3274, Retailed Price $14.95

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Altered Lives, Enduring Community
Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration

By Stephen S. Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez
2004, 253 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
Altered Lives, Enduring Community examines the long-term effects on Japanese Americans of their World War II experiences: forced removal from their Pacific Coast homes, incarceration in desolate government camps, and ultimate resettlement. The authors use data from the first-ever, representative survey of a community of Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II, conducted as part of Seattle's Densho: Japanese American Legacy Project. Their often poignant account presents the contemporary, post-redress perspectives of former incarcerees and reveals the incarceration's consequences for their lives.

Fugita and Fernandez show how prewar social and economic networks and the specific characteristics of the incarceration experience affected Japanese Americans' postwar readjustment. Topics explored include the effects of incarceration and resettlement on social relationships and community structure, educational and occupational trajectories, marriage and childbearing, and military service and draft resistance. The consequences of initial resettlement location and religious orientation are also examined. Throughout, the role of the Japanese American community in the prewar and postwar periods provides an interpretive backdrop.

ORDER -- Item #3275, Retailed Price $24.95

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Chang's Paper Pony and
The Magic Paintbrush Bundle

Chang's Paper Pony

By Eleanor Coerr
Illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray
1988, 64 pages, paperback.
Chang's Paper Pony
It's the time of the gold rush, and Chang has come with his grandfather to California from China. Chang's dream is to own a horse of his own. With luck… and a little gold dust… that wish just might come true.

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The Magic Paintbrush

By Laurence Yep
Illustrated by Suling Wang
2000, 89 pages, paperback.
The Magic Paintbrush
Steve can hardly believe it. With his new paintbrush, whatever he paints becomes real. Now he, Grandfather, and Uncle Fong can wish for anything they want. Uncle Fong uses the paintbrush to return China, to the village of his childhood and grandfather wants to meets the Lady on the Moon. Steve wonders if the magic paintbrush can bring his parents back. But they all soon realize the paintbrush might have its…

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ORDER -- Item #3278, Price For the Two Books Combined $8.98
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Executive Order 9066
The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans

By Maisie & Richard Conrat
1992, 120 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
The days following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were dark days of the American spirit. Unable to strike back effectively against the Japanese Empire, Americans in the Western states lashed out at fellow citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, was the instrument that allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Under this order all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from Western coastal regions to guarded camps in the interior. Former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, who represented the Department of Justice in the "relocation", writes in the Epilogue to this book:

The truth is - as this deplorable experience proves - that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves…Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066….

ORDER -- Item #1990, Price $14.95

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Swimming in the American
A Memoir and Selected Writings

By Hiroshi Kashiwagi
2005, 244 pages, Paperback.
Book Description -
This book is about my life, from my birth to the present. The format is essentially chronological covering my childhood years of the twenties, the Great Depression years of the thirties, the World War II years of the forties, and the postwar years to the present. However, it is not a straight narrative because it is a collection of vignettes that highlight certain events and moments of my life. These pieces were originally written at different points in my life, covering timely events or recollecting events of the past. So the chronology is sometimes blurred, the time jumping back and forth like flashbacks within a flashback. Through this "cinematic" method I hope to achieve a kind of impressionistic whole of my life story. Included also are poems which add a different perspective. Life wasn't always grim; there was some levity that leavened the days.
- Hiroshi Kashiwagi

ORDER -- Item #3285, Price $14.95

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Peek!
A Thai Hide and Seek

By Minfong Ho
Illustrated by Holly Meade
2004, 30 pages, Hardback.
Book Description -
It's morning, and Papa wants to play "Jut-Ay!" with his little girl, but where is she hiding? Can the animals all around help to find her, or are they playing hide-and-seek, too? Join them in their tender, noisy game in this gloriously illustrated read-aloud from the creator of the Caldecott Honor Book Hush! A Thai Lullaby.

"Jut-Ay" (pronounced like "Shut" and the "A" in "ABC") is the exclamation that Thai people use when they play "peek-a-boo" with their children.

ORDER -- Item #3281, Price $16.99

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Kira-Kira

By Cynthia Kadohata
2004, 244 pages, Hardback.
Book Description -
Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family moved from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering - kira-kira - in the future.

Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction.

ORDER -- Item #3287, Price $16.95

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My First Chinese New Year

By Karen Katz
2004, 27 pages, Hardback.
Book Description -
Chinese New Year is a time of new beginnings. Follow one little girl as she learns how to welcome the coming year and experience all the festivities surrounding it.

This warm and lively introduction to a special holiday will make even the youngest child want to start a Chinese New Year tradition.

ORDER -- Item #3280, Price $14.95

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The Mats

By Francisco Arcellana
Illustrated by Hermès Alègrè
1999, 20 pages, Hardback.
Book Description -
Marcelina's father returns from a trip to the southern province with a bundle of sleeping mats for his family. Each mat has the child's name woven into it. Each mat is designed to suit the child's personality.

But three additional mats remain in Father's bundle...

In this landmark adaptation, evocative of Philippine culture, Francisco Arcellana's classic story "The Mats" remains as fresh and as powerful as when it first appeared more than fifty years ago. The mats serve as a metaphor for the bitter sweet mix of love, laughter and loss woven into the fabric of everyday life. Hermès Alègrè's palette illuminates each scene with brilliant splashes of color sure to make this book a lasting treasure to be shared by the entire family.

ORDER -- Item #3288, Price $13.95

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Most recent revision March 17, 2005