New Mexico Books

Having lost an older copy of this wonderfully illustrated book, I ordered the paperback, only to be disapointed by the xerox quality of the drawings. This book deserves the hardbound format because the artwork is exceptionally authentic. The poorly copied paperback is not worthy.

This little book, intended for children, shows readers of all ages how an abobe home is built, and what all the components are, including a glossary as you go along. Great little book. All children interested in world cultures should read this book.

An educational book for adults and children about the architectural aspects of Adobe construction and SW culture with correct names, pronunciations and explainations of terms such as latillas, santos, luminairas and nichos. It is a description of a real adobe dollhouse in New Mexico. It is a great educational experience.

I enjoyed reading this book and I found the artwork to be most interesting. This book explains two of our strangest creatures, the flying squirrel and the bat, who can fly although they are not birds. The excitement builds up as the birds find a way to make wings for the little animals, no bigger than mice, to prepare for the ball game. The action of the game itself is quick and intense, as the animals and birds battle it out. Can you guess who wins? You'll find yourself cheering for Bat as he dips and dives for the ball, but watch out! Bluejay drops the ball just at the crucial moment. I give this one an A+ for enjoyment.

I am happy to find a book that describes the game of stickball the way it was originally played here in the southeast. We Cherokees called the game "the little brother of war" in the old days. Even now our villages near the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina play against each other in the traditional was, by setting up goal posts at both ends of the ball field. You will hear the teams taunting each other just as described in this book. Thanks to the writer and the artist for helping to keep our culture alive.

What more could you ask from a picture book? The Great Ball Game of the Birds and Animals is a wonderful tale that explains how the bat and the flying squirrel came to be. Duvall's version of this story sticks closely to the original Cherokee legend with expanded imagery and character development. Like all great stories, this one teaches a lesson for human beings. Jacob's beautifully detailed drawings will hold the imagination spellbound as the story unfolds in crisp black and white. This book won the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award for Design and Illustration. I am proud to own a signed first edition that I obtained while visiting Tahlequah, Oklahoma during the Cherokee National Holiday. I highly recommend this book to art collectors and readers alike.

Excellent book! Great new writer that knows how to write uniquely and with a different style! A real page turner!

This is a wildly creative and deeply thoughtful book. Great characters and inventive situations. It is a fun read and a book both myself and my wife enjoyed tremendously. Can't wait for his next book. We loved his first book also.

Joseph Heller (Catch 22) praised Lamarr's first novel, October Revolution, calling it a "lighthearted, dandy satire" containing a "variety of deft pops at many deserving targets." Lamarr doesn't play it safe with his bold second book, Hallelujah City. This is a daring blend of Cantebury Tales and On the road that explores the complexity of a father-daughter relationship as well as the seductive allure of religious fanatacism. It's all presented within the context of a classic road trip that ends with an explosive confrontation at a doomsday commune.

ellen zieselman is a brilliant writer. a magical piece. i hope she goes on to write others.

I purchased this book for my 6 year old after he expressed a sudden interest in marionettes. He is not yet reading fluently, but sits eagerly by my side nightly as we read through this beautiful book together. He has learned much about the marionettes of Gustave Baumann. The photographs provide high visual interest, and the text with marionettes doing the 'speaking' is quite appealing to young children.

This is a delightful representation of the artist and his work, beautifully and clearly written and magically photographed. It will make an enthusiast of the casual observer!

"I am here.
I am here, now.
I have been here, always."

Edmund J. Ladd (Zuni).

In 1989, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, NM, began to put together a project designed to present Native American culture, traditions, and contemporary life from an Indian point of view: not looking in from the outside but looking out from the inside, not analyzing in the way of anthropologists but giving its Indian contributors themselves a place to raise their manifold voices. The process thus begun resulted in a fascinating permanent exhibition presenting all aspects of Native American life from its historic origins to modernity, from arts and crafts to farming and hunting, and from the sacred to the secular (if that distinction applies at all, for there is a profoundly spiritual element to every single act performed over the course of the day). Endowed with a multitude of exhibits - many of them of priceless value - and using traditional displays as well as a multimedia approach combining various audiovisual tools, from its inception the exhibition rested on one inimitable centerpiece: the multi-timbred choir of the First People's very own voices.

Bearing the same title as the exhibition and illustrated by numerous photos, "Here, Now, and Always" provides an additional forum for these voices and sends them out into the world at large. "Listen carefully. Let the stories carry you to the center created by each Native community. Here, at the intersection of sky and earth, you will find the Southwest's people," the museum's former archeology curator, Sarah Schlanger, is quoted at the end of the introductory text to the book's first part, "Ancestors." And thus, the book's Dine (Navajo), Hopi, Zuni, Apache, Tohono O'odham (Pima) and manifold Pueblo contributors become messengers of their respective peoples; talking about Earth Mother, Sun Father, Changing Woman, Spider Woman and Spider Man, Salt Woman, the Great Spirit, the formation of the first clans and their wanderings, the sacred places marking their world and the meaning of home and community, the interrelation of the elements and man's interaction with them, the significance of clay, salt, corn, and tobacco, of minerals and precious stones, and of farming and hunting, the cycles of life, time, and the seasons, the importance of language, oral tradition, and sacred ceremonies in cultural preservation, and obstacles overcome and new challenges arising.

"Each mountain carries precious knowledge. Each is symbolized by certain birds, insects, trees, plants, songs, and prayers. Try to remember this when you think you might want to bulldoze these mountains. Let the sacred remain," warns Gloria Emerson (Dine) in the chapter entitled "Elements." Anthony Dorame (Tesuque Pueblo) explains about cycles that they are "circles that travel in straight lines." In the chapter on agriculture he recounts how his people revived their already-forgotten life as farmers, and wonders, "Today, we again hear the musical thump of a watermelon being split open in the field. Will we forget again what we now remember?" and later on, he adds that "[w]hen the branch is broken, the twig cannot survive. Without our language and without our ways, you cannot survive as a people." Similarly, recalling the young Zunis shipped off to Pennsylvania in the 1800s, all of whom died from loneliness after having been cut off from their cultural roots, Edmund J. Ladd (Zuni) - whose words also provided the project's title - reflects that these days, it is his people's language that is dying from loneliness. In the chapter entitled "Arts," Michael Lacapa (Apache/Hopi/Tewa) adds that the word "art" does not exist in his language at all, and muses, "We make pieces of life to see, touch, and feel. Shall we call it 'art'? I hope not. It may lose its soul. It is life. It is people." And in talking about a mid-20th century professor's prediction that traditional Indian life would vanish within a matter of years due to the spread of a cash economy, federal relocation policies, and WWII veterans' reluctance to return to their prewar lifestyle, Dave Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo) points out that like the footprints and handholds left behind by their ancestors in the southwestern canyons, cliffs, and plateaus, "tradition is deeply etched into our very being. ... [W]e are of these spaces, places, and times. We leave our footprints for another generation; we leave our handholds to steady their journey."

Bringing together all these and many other voices, "Here, Now, and Always" pays tribute to the rich heritage of the Southwest's Native people, and builds a unique bridge to a way of life, traditions, and beliefs sidelined and on the brink of extinction practically from the moment the first white man set down his conqueror's foot in the region, although these very traditions had survived in (largely) peaceful coexistence for centuries before. A slim volume of less than 100 pages, the book is nevertheless powerful testimony to the First People's resilience and ability to adapt to altered circumstances while maintaining the core of their cultural values. As such, it is highly recommended reading - and hopefully, also an incentive to one day go and see the exhibition from which it originates.

"Together we traveled,
in search of the center place.
In numbers we grew.
The center place had not been found.
The gods divided the people.
Some traveled north,
to the land of winter.
Some traveled south,
to the land of summer.
We are the people."

Edmund J. Ladd (Zuni).

Also recommended:
The Native Peoples of North America: A History
The Native Americans: An Illustrated History
Southwestern Indians: Arts & Crafts - Tribes - Ceremonials
Native North American Art (Oxford History of Art)
Four Corners: History, Land, and People of the Desert Southwest
The New Encyclopedia of the American West

Les malades dans l'hopital de Sells, dans l'etat d'Arizona, prennent de la cuisine traditionnelle du sud-ouest. Se guerit-on lorsqu'on se sent lie avec le culture et la terre maternaux? En fait, les danses qui se font pendant la scheresse se servent de l'energie de la creation liee, depuis les danseurs, jusqu'aux ancestres, aux descendants et a l'univers entier. Les arts du sud-ouest, eux aussi, se font, pour lier le passe, le moment actuel et l'avenir du culture, du peuple et de l'univers. Ainsi sont-ils beaux et serviables, tels que de la poterie, du tissage, et de la vannerie. A vrai dire, les peaux-rouges se croient originaires des terres tout autour des rivieres Colorado, Gila, Rio Grande, Salt et San Juan, les destinations finales de tous leurs esprits lies aussi.

Patients in the hospital at Sells, Arizona, are away from what they're used to drink and eat. So they're served traditional foods. Respecting the traditional link to nature and people keeps up physical and spiritual strength. In contrast, in the 19th century, Zuni boys and girls were sent to Carlyle, Pennsylvania. They didn't feel part of a community or nature. They'd felt both in the southwest. They never made it back home. They died from loneliness.

In the southwest, life has always been about getting along with nature and people. One traditional way that southwestern cultures do this is through dance. Music sounds within the dancer. That energy joins the dancer to all creation. So the dancer becomes linked with human energy, such as ancestors and future generations.

The dancer also links to natural energy, such as rain clouds. This is why the Hopi rain dance brings rain. In fact, the Hopi say that their corn, grown unirrigated, and their way of life, in harmony with nature and people, will save the world. The Apache also got through war, reservation poverty, depression and censorship by drawing energy from community, nature, and prayers.

It should be no surprise, then, that a southwestern work of art has a link and use too. Pottery stands for the sacred earth bowl. Traditional designs keep the tie strong between past, present and future generations.

HERE, NOW, & ALWAYS comes out of an exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Along with artworks, such as beautifully useful basketry, pottery and weavings, there are also audios, videos and writings of southwesterners on ancestors, community, cycles of nature and people, and survival.

Southwesterners believe they didn't come from somewhere else. They've always been here first, right from the start, along the Colorado, Gila, Rio Grande, Salt and San Juan rivers. They'll also be the last. For example, the Hopi believe that the life of their people began at the Grand Canyon. That also will be their final spiritual home.

Frank Weissburth captures the heart and soul of New Mexico and the beauty of small mountain rivers in an elegant set of essays that both document and illuminate fishing for rare trout in small waters. His writing is a love letter to places both special and beautiful. Woven in the essays on these small fragile waters are meditations on children, friends, dogs, old but trustworthy (to a point) cars, learning to fish and learning to care. He illuminates with thoughts about his growth in concern for the the streams and the mountains and the world beyond both of them.

A well written book about fishing small streams in the southwest, the joys of solitude - in short, a life with quality fishing as one if its foci. Recommended for those with a bent toward fine writing about sport...............

This is a wonderful book. It is a lyrically written expression of Mr. Weissbarth's keen and experienced observations of the beauty and wonders of Northern New Mexico's mountain streams and the trout that inhabit them, as well as a statement of the deep connection between himself and this unique environment. His respect and reverence are apparent. I have read many of John
Gerach's fine essays on fly fishing, rivers, and life. I have read Howell Raines' Fly Fishing Through Mid-Life Crisis. Holy Ghost Creek stands with these works.

Jacona is the story of the Mestas family's experiences and love for New Mexico, especially Jacona, in the early years of Spanish exploration and colonization of the new world. Jacona has everything: adventure, hardship, battles, romance, family, politics and religion - a well rounded view of Spanish life and customs in the harsh but beautiful terrain of New Mexico. Growing up in Jacona myself, I was deeply touched by the story which brought to life a bit of my history and reinforced my opinion that Jacona is and always has been one of the most beautiful and enchanting places on earth.

This is an excellent novel that was very well researched. The author knows his history and apparently thought this one through before putting pen to paper. Highly recommended!!

This novel is very well researched. It covers the early Spanish settlements in Mexico and New Mexicao from 1540-1680, and is the story of a fictional family based on the author's own ancestors. The writing is formal and somewhat stiff, but many times you can't put it down. And I learned a lot.

History, a great story and an authentic historical craft! Not only that, but just the right size for girl-sized hands. A+++++++ Cannot be beat!

This is another one of the American Girls Short Stories series about Josefina Montoya, a nine-year-old girl living in the New Mexico of 1824. In this book, when Josefina and her father journey up to the mountains to visit one of the rancho's shepherds and his grandson, they discover a recent illness has left him blind. In spite of Josefina's pleading, her father decides to retire the shepherd. But, on their way home, Josefina and her father are caught in a sudden storm, and he is injured. Can Josefina save the day?

The final chapter of this book looks at shepherding in 1824, and gives directions for making a mini rug (it looks quite fun and easy, and my daughter and I are going to make one). As always, Jean-Paul Tibbles has produced some excellent illustrations that add a great deal to this already excellent book. My daughter and I both highly enjoyed this book, and we recommend it to you.

"Josefina's Song" is the third Josefina short story that was published, but it is set just before the book "Josefina Saves the Day". In "Josefina's Song", Josefina is allowed to join her Papa on a trip to the local mountains. They are going to visit the shepherd and his son who spend most of the year with the herd of sheep on the more abundant grazing land found in the mountains. When they arrive at their camp, they realize that the shepherd has become blind from a fever, and his nine year old son watches the sheep. Even though the shepherd proves himself capable around the camp, Papa is still worried for his safety. Papa offers to house them comfortably in town, but Josefina boldly speaks up for them, jeopardizing her own trip to Santa Fe that same summer. On their way home, a summer storm hits and Papa is injured when his frightened horse rears at lightning and bolts. Brave Josefina leads her Papa on her own horse back to the shepards camp, until men from home discover the runaway horse and rescue them in the morning. During the night, Josefina sings in her beautiful voice to the shepherd's flute playing. When she runs out of songs she knows, she sings her feelings about her journey, her outspokenness, the storm, Papa's accident and about the care the shepherd gives them. The next day, the abilities of the shepherd and his son are re-evaluated.

Great history book detailing some of the little-known (or unknown) parts of Kit's life. Very well researched and very well written. Not "dry" research, but living information.

Kit Carson lived a life that many young men would have liked to have lived. He seemingly was in all the right places at the time that a nation was being born. He grew from a simple kid to being an American Patriot.
Simmons book cpatures the real Kit Carson, the man, the family, the life and times--it is not a novel, it contains 35 pages of documented footnotes--by one of the best historians of the west.
At a time when the slave trade was still happening, he raised several Indian children, along with his own, by buying the kids from the slave traders. It is a book that helps anyone understand time and place. The book has been nominated for a national award.

Nobody in his era survived more adventures and did more hard traveling than Kit Carson. His dispatch duties during the Mexican War totalled 16,000 miles -- most of that by horseback. In the first six years of his marriage to his third wife, he spent only six months at home in Taos. Carson was restless, and also uniquely qualified to play a major role in the far-flung events taking place across the Western U.S.

That is by way of saying that Carson was hardly domesticated. Based on very limited information this book looks into Carson's life with his three wives. With the first, Waa-nibe, an Arapahoe woman, he seems to have enjoyed domestic bliss. After she died he took up residence with Making Out Road, a beautiful and willful Cheyenne woman in what proved to a relationship from hell. After escaping from -- or being thrown out of the teepee by -- Making Out Road, he married Josefa, a Mexican woman of respectable family from Taos.

It was apparently a good marriage -- although Carson was rarely there and, moreover, never earned any money. In the census of 1850, when he was 41 years old, the value of his property totalled just over $200. Carson, however, apparently was a loving and responsible parent. He put his half-Arapaho daughter in school in Missouri and raised not only his own children in Taos but adopted several Indian orphans.

This is a good book, as much about the comings and goings of Kit Carson, as it is about his family relationships. The author tells of the fate of his wives and children and has included a number of photographs of family members. There's a large literature about Carson and little information about him that has not already been explored, but this book gives a different slant on his life than other biographies.

Smallchief

Great job papi, and a great read!
love, your daughter,
Julia

John Nichols is always a joy to read. He is the John Stenbeck of our time. No one combines art and social views so beautifully as he does.

My grandmother gave this beautiful book to me for Christmas the year it was published. (I believe it was 1980 or 1981). I feel madly in love and am still madly in love today. I re-read this book every year in October, it has become a most beloved ritual. I took a chance in early 1992 and wrote to John Nichols and was I ever surprised! He wrote me back. I have two copies and now that they have a new edition, I plan on buying it too! I have a hard back signed copy that I treasure and I know it is authentic because the signature is exactly the way he signed his letter to me. Read this book and plan to be thoroughly enchanted. I was and still am after almost 20 years.