Calabash Books was established in 2007 as the children's literature imprint of Belknap Publishing and Design (www.belknappublishing.com), a graphic design, editorial and publishing company founded in 1987 in Hawaii by Jodi Parry Belknap. Our team is  dedicated to creating beautifully illustrated childrenʻs books about the countries, cultures and islands of the Pacific Rim that embrace the Ring of Fire.

Performing Arts CDs and Downloadable Projects

   We want young readers to have fun learning about the endangered animals, peoples and cultures of this vast and beautiful part of our planet. To help meet that goal our books come with a Performing Arts CD and/or creative projects to download from our website. There are masks and puppet patterns, stage models and scripts for young performers, and education-based lessons for educators and young readers about the animals, environments and amazing arts and cultures encountered in our books.

Stage Productions
   Dr.Tamara Montgomery, co-author of our first title, Kraken-ka, the Komodo Dragon, was inspired to include an adaptation from it as part of a play for young children presented by her students at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where she was Director of the graduate department of Youth Theatre until her retirement in 2010. 

   Our primary illustrator, Joseph Dodd, Director of Design for the Department of Theatre and Dance for the University, designed the set for Kraken and onstage productions adapted from our next two books, TiQri, The Little Snow Fox, and When the Cassowary Pooped. 

   Author Tamara Montgomery also arranged for TiQri,The Little Snow Fox, to be successfully adapted and presented as part of the educational program for young people in the elegant setting of historic Hawaii Theatre in Honolulu, and on tour to schools in Hawaii by the popular traveling performance group, ‘Ōhi‘a Productions.
   We are delighted to report, too, that the tradition of books-to-stage stepped up to a new level in 2011 with the culturally-oriented play Tasiʻs Gift, The Tale of a Samoan Bowl, by Jamie and Aito Simpson Steele, commissioned and developed by the artistic director and talented actors and staff at Hawaiiʻs famed Honolulu Theatre for Youth, and performed as its holiday play. It was inspired by our newest book, Tasiʻs Gift, A Tale of Samoa, by Tamara Montgomery, with illustrations by Joseph D. Dodd, who also designed sets for the play.
 
Awards
   Kraken-ka, The Komodo Dragon, A Tale of Indonesia, received the Hawai'i Book Publishers Association  Honorable Mention award for Excellence in Children's Illustrative or Photographic Literature in 2008. When the Cassowary, Pooped, A Tale of New Guinea, received the primary award in the same category in 2010.