LITERARY TREND: One result of Santa Ana...

LITERARY TREND: One result of Santa Ana bookstore owner Rueben Martinez selling nearly 1,300 copies of Isabel Allende’s work at a recent tribute to the best-selling Latina author: When the American Booksellers Assn. heard the numbers, it invited Martinez to speak at its convention in Chicago later this month. . . . His topic: the boom in Latino books. “Many publishers now are looking at the market and saying it’s worth it to translate these books,” Martinez says. “If they’re in stock, they will sell.”

MAJOR PEST: Dino, the realistic, 8-foot-tall papier-mache and fiberglass dinosaur skeleton, has been home-hopping for some time. Crafted by a theater group in Texas, he belonged for a while to the Laguna Playhouse. . . . When he wound up in one of its garage sales, he was bought by Mission Pest Control in Laguna Hills as an advertising gimmick. Now it’s seeking a permanent home for Dino, maybe someplace with a natural history display. . . . Says company president Tim Saunders: “He’s too spectacular to discard.”

SANS REGIS: It may sometimes seem--to both her detractors and admirers--that she’s everywhere. Kathie Lee Gifford, co-host of an ABC-TV morning show with Regis Philbin, does commercials and TV specials, writes books and sings on the road. This time she’s at the Orange County Performing Arts Center for its Pop Series on Friday and Saturday. . . . She recently explained her schedule in a CNBC interview: “My dad always said, ‘Find out what it is you like to do, then find a way to get paid for it.’ ”

DON’T STRIKE TWICE: Seven years ago, Kaylee Whitfield of Santa Ana, now 16, and seven teammates on her Bobby Sox softball team were struck by lightning. Today, she’s one of Orange County’s best athletes (V1). She doesn’t remember much about the lightning strike, which stopped her heart. She also has no psychological scars. . . . “I find lightning fascinating,” she says. “I think it’s really cool.”