But there is another side to this picture. Take Captain Bob Riggs, for example, who spent 6-1/2 years in the Far East with the U.S. Marine Corps--most of that time in Okinawa. Riggs went out of his way to explore the local landscape, teaching English classes to regular citizens, studying Japanese language at the University of Maryland's Okinawa campus, and even living off-base for a time, outside the typical "Americanized" marine neighborhoods.

As if that weren't enough to shatter the usual marine stereotype, he also wrote a children's book in his spare time, with a young Okinawan woman as one of two main characters. (See our young adult fiction title, My Best Defense).

Although Riggs' novel was written in Okinawa, it is set in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, where 13-year-old Jack Winslow and 29-year-old Maki Yamashiro come to see the world around them through the transforming eyes of friendship.

Inspiration for the book struck in yet another setting: the beaches of Waikiki. Riggs recalls, "I was on the beaches with all these Japanese businessmen walking along the sand, and I said to myself, 'What would it be like to pluck one of these guys out and slap them in the Midwest?' That's what gave me the idea.

"Also, I wanted to tell--without writing a travelog or a boring essay -- what I thought about Okinawan culture. I wanted to take two innocents and put them together and watch them interact and grow."

Riggs is happy with the book's critical reception. Kirkus called Jack, the book's narrator, "an engaging and complex character," School Library Journal praised the book's humor and buoyant tone, and KLIATT hailed the novel as "a winner ... highly recommended."

FYI: Riggs retired from the Marine Corps in June 1995 and returned home to the Kansas City area.

Flatboating on the Yellowstone, 1877
A firsthand account by Fred G. Bond

In the autumn of 1877, Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce surrendered at the Bear Paw Mountains, becoming one of the last western tribes to succumb to U.S. forces. In the weeks following Joseph's eloquent surrender, his people were relocated from their homelands in eastern Oregon to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Fred G. Bond was only twenty-five when he piloted a flatboat of Nez Perce prisoners down the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, on the first leg of their long journey south. He later wrote about his experience for the New York Public Library. Here his account is framed with an introduction and epilogue explaining the context of the journey. A handsome volume that includes maps, archival photos, source notes, bibliography and index.
Nonfiction, ages 10 and up.
$19.95, Cloth

PUBLISHER/SUPPLIER: WARD HILL PRESS

ISBN: 1-886747-03-2