Colorado Books

This book is just wonderful. I loved reading it and enjoyed the illustrations. The illustrator got the feel of Colorado just right. Younger children will love the rhyming couplets, and will try to memorize them on the spot. Middle school children will find the sidebar texts interesting and full of fun facts about Colorado. As a Colorado resident, I especially enjoyed discovering the places and people the author featured. As an educator I feel this book would be a great addition to children's non-fiction collections at home and school and will appeal to kids ages 5-14.

"C is for Centennial" by Colorado native Louise Whitney is a wonderful and informative book about the beautiful state of Colorado-written in the alphabetical letter format. This delightful book celebrates Colorado's 100 plus years of statehood with rhymes and facts about selected Coloradoans, historical landmarks, natural resources, and even the state song. The text is creatively and well written, the corresponding illustrations are well chosen, complementary, and beautifully done, and the entire book is a treasure to read. Each new alphabetical letter that is introduced is so interesting that you want to immediately turn to the next page to see what the following letter represents!

Many of the well-known sites (especially to visitors of the state) are represented, such as Mesa Verde, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, Four Corners, and the Royal Gorge. But you will be surprised by the numerous additional facts about Colorado that you didn't know about such as herbal teas, the poetess who wrote "America the Beautiful", rodeos, the Pony Express, and even bicycles! Bravo to Louise Whitney for her authorship and extensive knowledge and to Helle Urban for her lovely and life-like illustrations throughout the book and the cover. You can really see in reading Whitney's creative work that she holds Colorado close to her heart.

This book is not only for children of all ages; adults will also enjoy the illustrations and facts about Colorado. It is a real treat to sit back and read about a state well traveled and loved by many. "C is for Centennial" is a splendid book that needs to be in homes and on the shelves of school and community libraries. It will prove to be a valuable resource book for students who may be assigned the task of writing a state report in their classrooms.

On September 17, 1868, Eugene Carr's Fifth United States cavalry guided by "Buffalo Bill" Cody, surprised and attacked Tall Bull's village of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers at Summit Springs, Colorado Territory. In one of the hastily abandonded lodges, a ledger book was found which had been initially captured by the Cheyenne during their retalitory raids following the Sand Creek massacre four years earlier. In the book were drawings of events of great valor done by Cheyenne warrior/artists.

The authors have reproduced the pages of the original ledgerbook in their original size and have added very detailed explainations of the drawings.

This book is very well researched and produced. David F. Halaas is the Colorado State Historian and Andrew Masich is a past president of that organization.

A GREAT BOOK ON A GREAT PART OF NA HISTORY OF A PROUD NATION

First published in 1960, Neil R. Johnson's The Chickasaw Rancher, Revised Edtion, tells the story of Montford T. Johnson and the mixed and intermarried Chickasaw settlements of Oklahoma (and Indian Territories). Abandoned by his father after his mother's death and then left on his own following his grandmother's passing in 1858, Johnson had control of a piece of land in the northern part of the Chickasaw Nation (and some in the Oklahoma Territory that was often occupied by the Boomers) in what is now Oklahoma.
The Chickasaw Rancher follows Montford's family and friends for the next fifty years. Neil R. Johnson (Montford's grandson) describes the work, the ranch parties, cattle rustling, gun fights, tornadoes, (the unexpected return of Montford's father after a thirty-three year absence, trips to Florida and New York City), encroachment of white settlers, the run of 1889, the hard deaths of many along the way, and the rise, the fall, and the revival of the Chickasaw Nation. (The original edition ends with Montford's death in 1896. The revised edition covers the next generation's continued expansion of the family's business ventures ending with E. B. Johnson's death in 1935).
Including more than fifty previously unavailable photographs, illustrations, and maps, (and more than 20% new material) this revised edition of The Chickasaw Rancher, edited by C. Neil Kingsley-grandson of Neil R. Johnson-is the perfect addition to any reader's collection of the history of the American West. Cover illustration based on painting done by Oklahoma City artist, Greg Burns.

This book is a most unusual account of life on the range. It describes the life of Montford Johnson, a friend of Jesse Chisholm, from around the time of the Civil War until after the land runs in Oklahoma prior to 1900.
The unique value lies in the specifics of living on the range, the daily routine of the cattle drive, and the reality of cowboy life.
Taken largely from the journal of his son, it's a story that Hollywood could use.

A wonderfully distressful novel! Mary takes you to many complex levels that are part of the experience of being human. This book will not only force you to look at the complex prejudice and discrimination issues in our culture, but will expose parts of your own heart you may not want to see. The characters become vivid and alive and you will miss them for days after the last page has been turned. Kudos! to Mary Anderson Parks. Please don't make us wait to long for your next book. Yes, please do write a sequel and let us know about Sky and Katherine.

Mary Parks has created a character who is believable and real. She makes choices by intuition to preserve her family and herself by returning to her home on the reservation. After making the choice to be there, she makes the best of her difficult relationship with her mother and the man she gets too involved with. This character stayed with me for days as I read her search for herself and her ability to make wrong choice yet not be devastated by these mistakes. I liked her courage and her inner solidity as she makes her way into a new life. The themes of interracial marriage and raising children in a sometimes hostile world are intriguing and touch us as the sturggles of many women in the 90s.

We bought this book for our seven-year-old son who is interested in foxes. He loves it! And what a surprise, when we read this sweet story of a fox family who makes their home on the outskirts of a city cemetery, that we love this book just as much as he does. We were pleased that it tells of the roles of both the mother fox and the father fox in caring for the kits.
The many photos are excellent and there is even a useful two-page section of "Red Fox Facts" in the back.
This book also rates high with us for overall quality: thick glossy pages, tightly-bound and printed on acid-free paper in Canada.
We highly recommend this wonderful story. It would be a welcome addition to any home library or a perfect gift for any young (or slightly older) animal lover.

This book absolutely touched my heart and soul. The true story of foxes living in a cemetary will touch all your emotions. If you love wild life, buy this one.

Dan Whipple's Click incorporates all the elements of a well-written mystery-suspense novel with a subtle underlying humor that will keep you smiling.
A murder investigation in small town Wyoming induces free-lance photographer/protagonist McClary to raise a skeptical eyebrow at investigator Lt. Oldman. When McClary's best friend joins the growing list of victims, the stakes are raised for this artist/observer.
Along the trail to the solution of these seemingly small town, small time murders, McClary hooks up with a New Jersey redhead currently working as a reporter for the only in-state newspaper enjoying statewide circulation. When the two witness the assassination of a national political figure (from Wyoming, of course), the ante ratchets up and then Reporter Nadia Bzdak is kidnapped by the conspirators.
The tension is appropriately and skillfully balanced by an underlying tone of light amusement which seems to pose the question: "how imporant can anything in Wyoming really be?"
(Mr. Whipple needn't have left the state before publishing this gem- many of us here share the same view.)
The perfect book with which to spend a winter evening by the fireside forgetting-- for a few hours-- the world's tensions.

Finally, a book Wyoming can be proud of. Dan Whipple pays attention and gives us book with the people we know and love in Wyoming. Who would have ever thought Wyoming had personalities and politics worthy of detective novel status?

Better than watching reruns of Northern Exposure, "Click" is full real people and politics revealed to us one snapshot at a time. I loved our sloppy but savvy,loner/photographer/amature detective, he made me laugh out loud and I felt a page turning obiligation to help him get to the bottom of things.

Somehow Dan manages to get every Wyoming joke I ever heard into the book without portraying all of us as undereducated bumpkins. Well, he does work in the famous cookie episode.

And the best part is, he gives us a heroine of magnificent quality. Not easy for a guy. Although Dan says characters in the book are fictional, I like thinking these folks are my neighbors. Thank you Dan. Read this book.

colcha needs no dust jacket.

The 42 poems within and the poet himself are already covered with the authentic dust of dying grass, cedar fence post, dry ditches, alfalfa fields, low riding Monte Carlos, tired Ford 3/4 ton pick ups, and the rutted roads outside the small southern Colorado town of Antonito. It's a fine adobe dust that clings to sweaty skin like an old shirt.

From birth Aaron Abeyta learned rural work. He knows the spring of a tractor seat, the heft of hay bails, the irrigating pull of the Conejos River, the instincts of cows, and the instinctive, unison movement of sheep. But his real work became the creation of daringly intimate poems that move at a careful and measured walking pace.

Cumulatively, these remarkable poems urge us to learn about the land (here or anywhere) by meeting the source of its community and culture--by meeting families. "I have family here," Abeyta writes. It's family he knows so well he sweeps their graves. These Antonito stories, so delightfully particular to an old community rich in culture, convey their universality in the tribute, celebration, and resurrection of family and of friends--both famous and infamous.

Here, the poet works in the solitude required of him, but he is never alone. The truth of family and community and culture spreads over him like the land, like the wind, like the sky. Thanks to the embrace and voice and face of family, the land has an embrace (my heart somehow held within its adobe walls), the wind has a voice (god whispers/my own name to me from the alfalfa fields), and the sky has a face (a blood shot eye/a face that has had too much wine).

In colcha you'll find purposeful language lyrically illuminated with affectionate Spanish salutations (abuelito, tia, carnal) and the tones of San Luis Valley phrasing that lack satisfactory English translation (para buscar otro mar, tan poquito el amor luego perderlo).

To be sure, it's death that tightens the stitches of this collection, and it is death that ultimately ties Abeyta's family and community and culture to the land. But in his patient hand death rarely descends to tragedy. His stories are more often sly than dark, modulated rather than graphic, sweet rather than maudlin.

And death doesn't keep him from giving away an inside joke. In poems like "zoot suit jesus," "thirteen ways of looking at a tortilla," "santa fe girl," "instructions on how to write a pinche suicide note," "mixed metaphor," and even the astringent "december 20th," he goes for the laugh and gets it.

If death is a horse that "ran so fast...only its tail got wet," then Aaron Abeyta is a poet who grabs that palomina by the mane and allows us to slip on her bare back. There we feel the deep, hot breathing of emotion, "the second most true thing on earth."

"Nothing is myth," he promises, and--perhaps knowing death too well--he gently steers us toward the first most true thing on earth, family.

Is Abeyta is a writer who knows the land? He's better, because his land--the high, broad llano between Colorado's shadowy San Jauns and sharp Sangre de Cristos--already knows him, like a brother and by name.

This just may be one of the best books of poetry I have ever read. A strong statement to be sure but you just have to read these poems to see what I mean. Abeyta, professor of English at Colorado State University and multiple prize winning poet, has blended the English and Spanish languages into a lyrical style, tone and imagery that is almost musical in its effect. Using his Hispanic culture and heritage he introduces the reader to what he considers to be the two most true things on earth: Family and human emotion. "A poem without family or emotion is, to me, nothing more than letters upon letters, the sound of hoofbeats without ever having seen the horse." Thus, by combining these two timeless subjects, Abeyta, letter upon letter and word upon word, shares with the reader what he considers to be "..all that is real to me, love, death, emotion and family. I shall put them into stories a hundred times over, one poem at a time."This he does in an unforgettable collection that explores the essence of humanity, the land of his people, and the individuals of his family that resonate with clarity, compassion and yes, love, death, emotion, and family. In these forty-two poems we meet herders, farmers, grandparents, tortilla makers, and a host of other so-called common people who have been exploited but not defeated. It has been said that Abeyta's poems about the exploitation of the common people belong in the same league with those of Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Pablo Neruda. High praise indeed and richly deserved. If you are looking for poetry that speaks to the soul, not in a "mushy" or "touchy-feely" way but with understanding and wisdom about things that matter, this is for you. This is the kind of writing that gives poetry a good name.

This book is so easy to read and so interesting that I just couldn't put it down. I love it! I enjoy the old west and this book was surely a down home western tale.. all of you should read it and love it!

A good, easy to read story. Set in Texas and Colorado this story leads you through thick and thin with Will Sterritt, sharing all his excitement, danger, love and life in general as he starts on a new adventure as foreman of the Circle D ranch. I have enjoyed this book so much that I read it 3 times! It's just a good down home story.

1882 Colorado

THE COLORADO BRIDE is a quick, easy and delightful tale of two determined people that came together to make an enduring family. You'll enjoy this moving romance!

Cole McGuire needed a good reason to return to White Stone, Colorado.
In 1882 Cole received a letter from Lily dated 1879 telling him that he was to become a father. Suprising news from his former mistress. But he knew that she would not lie to him.
For some reason the whole town seemed to be hiding the true story of what happened to Lily and his son.
He is told that Lily and her baby died in childbirth.
He approaches Mrs. Curtis Taylor, the lady that wrote the letter for Lily, hoping to find out the truth about his child.
Rebecca is being courted by the sheriff who causes some trouble and tries to keep Cole from seeing her.
Rebecca's heart stopped when Cole rode back into town and she wished more and more for a love she'd never had.
But would Cole ever forgive her for hiding the truth -- that the son she claimed as her own was the child he'd been searching for?
This book is highly recommended -- you will really enjoy it.

COLORADO COURTSHIP is a wonderfully tender story of the hardship of one woman crossing country in a wagon train to a new life in a new location. This is another gem by Carolyn Davidson!

Carolyn Davidson outdoes herself with Colorado Courtship. Finn Carson knew he wanted Jessica Beaumont from the first time he saw her but she was unfortunately the wife of an ill-tempered, abusive man. She was also a soon-to-be mother. When Jessica's husband is killed for the deed to a valuable piece of property, Finn is first in line to court her. She eventually accepts his proposal and the conflict (and loving) begins.
Although there's an underlying theme in this book that could potentially ruin their relationship, the devotion that Finn shows toward Jessica is very, very special and just melted my heart.
We meet a younger Gage Morgan in this book. He thinks Jessica is the woman for him but he'll find later in Carolyn Davidson's The Marriage Agreement that he only thought Jessica was the love of his life.