SUMMER 2010

As we prepare our fall list to send to the printer for timely holiday arrival, it’s a reminder of how exciting publishing is. Each new book to be released becomes like awaiting a newborn baby. This fall we have a bumper crop of close to 30 titles. They cover almost all genres, demonstrating how diverse Hawaii regional publishing is. And the array of authors is impressive–from all walks of life, all ages and backgrounds.

Once again, we’re strong in cookbooks. Betty Shimabukuro, Managing Editor of the new Honolulu Star-Advertiser, has a sequel to her first By Request: The Search for Hawaii’s Greatest Recipes. By Request 2: The Continuing Search for Hawaii’s Greatest Recipes includes gems discovered in the years since her first book, plus more greatest hits from years past. Betty has also teamed up with our good friend and chef emeritus, Muriel Miura, for Hawaii's Holiday Cookbook: Island Favorites for Every Celebration—From New Year to Christmas. This volume will make it fun for island cooks to liven up the food at those special festive family gatherings celebrating holidays.

From the neighbor islands, Audrey Wilson, author of What the Big Island Likes to Eat, has compiled an anthology of Big Island recipes from that island’s chefs, restaurants, KTA family, and food industry nutritionalists for Aunty Audrey’s Big Island Eats: Favorite Island Recipes From Chefs, Restaurants, and Community Members.

Our good family friend, Chef Tylun Pang, after many years of anticipation, is bringing us What Maui Likes to Eat, featuring his signature recipes that he serves at the Fairmont Kea Lani Maui Hotel in Wailea, where he is Executive Chef, as well as family recipes, contributions from his fellow chefs, community members, and Maui-only fare prepared Tylun-style.

Not a cookbook, although it has a few recipes–Chef Mark Ellman of Mala Ocean Tavern and Barbara Santos have gathered stories, anecdotes and epigrams from over 200 contributors that remind us once again how important aloha is–and more important, Practicing Aloha. This should be a bestseller.

We have an excellent array of children’s titles. In the holiday mode are Celebrating Holidays in Hawaii by Leslie Hayashi and Kathleen Wong Bishop, and A Hawaiian Christmas Tail by Riki Inzano . Non-holiday stories to delight and entertain keiki, along with a positive lesson or message, are Lucy and Lilo Save the Honu by Mary Kate Wright, Maile and the Huli Hula Hen by Mary Braffet, and Nai‘a to the Rescue by Katie Grove Velasquez and Michael Ogata, whose first book, New Friend for Nai‘a, turned out to be a bestseller.

Our new how-to books feature Let’s Kanikapila II, the long awaited sequel to Volume 1. In Hawaiian Sea Life Origami: A Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide, Laurie Shimizu Ide teams up with her eleven-year-old daughter, Karley. (Laurie’s other Mutual books include Money Lei Making Volumes 1 & 2, Hawaiian Tropical Flower Arranging, Hawaii’s Seeds and Seed Leis, Hawaiian Seed Lei Making, and Hawaiian Shell Lei Making.) Jim Widess’ series of Hawaiian craft books continues with How to Make Hawaiian Lauhala Bracelets (his other Mutual titles include How to Make Hawaiian Ribbon Leis, How to Make Hawaiian Musical Instruments, and How to Weave Hawaiian Coconut Palm Fronds: A Step by Step Guide).

Just released, Neil Dukas’ Battle of Nuuanu is a pocketsize volume analyzing the 1795 battle that was crucial to the formation of the Hawaiian kingdom by Kamehameha the Great. Neil tells us that military officers stationed in Hawaii study this battle for its strategic lessons. The book is based on lectures and talks that he has given to military audiences. (Neil also wrote A Military History of Sovereign Hawaii.)

We have two very strong, extremely well written novels -- top-line fiction.

If You Live in a Small House by Sandra Park is a warm, loving, evocative look at a multi-generational local family in the 1950s. Vintage photographs of the era provide visual nostalgia.

In absolute contrast–Tweakerville, by Alexei Melnick, takes us into the violent world of life and death on crystal meth–“ice-” in Hawaii. The drug is a dreadful scourge, epidemic in the islands, and this debut novel is shockingly powerful storytelling–there has never been anything like it in local fiction.

Possibly for 2010, if they can be finished, definitely in 2011–two to three adult puzzle books, Timeline Hawaii: A Chronology of Hawaiian History, and a new look at Father Damien, distilled from his own words and the words of those who knew him first hand in his years of devoted work among Hawaiians at the Kalawao leprosy settlement on Molokai–eyewitness accounts of the making of a saint.

Mahalo,

Bennett