Scott Eriksen: World of Music - Australia, Hawaii, and the Pacific by Deborah Underwood

World of Music does a really good job introducing students to music with which they may not be familiar, like a lot of books in the series. There's a lot of music between Australia, Hawaii and the myriad of islands in the Pacific. This book brings up a lot of the similarities between them, gives a basic look at the history of music in each location, and mentions and special characteristics the different kinds of music might have. We don't have a lot of the same instruments as are used in these genres so there is a good amount of pictures to explain exactly what is being played and how one might play it. This book could be valuable in the classroom to show how music in different cultures is very different from our own, and that you can learn a lot about a culture just by the music.