Books published by publisher Univ of New Mexico Pr

In this book Kyong Hwa Lee combines the art of origami and the science of flight to create unique paper airplane designs for aviation enthusiasts of all ages. Featuring thirty-two designs, Amazing Paper Airplanes showcases models resembling real-world aircraft, including the F-22 fighter jet, a P-51 World War II plane, the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger—the first supersonic delta-wing interceptor airplane of the US Air Force—and more. For these models, Lee provides information along with an image of the real plane to encourage interest in aerospace technology. Every design has been flight-tested and presents complete step-by-step folding instructions. In addition to showing basic and advanced folding techniques and providing templates for each plane, the author explains the theory behind flight and offers tips to fine-tune paper airplanes for optimal flying.ABOUT THE AUTHORKyong Hwa Lee holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and has worked for more than twenty-five years in the aerospace industry. Lee has designed over one hundred unique paper airplanes over the last thirty years. His coauthored Paper Airplane Fold-a-Day calendar has been popular worldwide since its first publication in 2006. Every day hundreds of paper airplane enthusiasts visit his website at www.amazingpaperairplanes.com.

"Old Jake Hanlon sits on the edge of the mesa and looks out over miles of southwestern plain," starts Jack Schaefer's all-ages novel Mavericks. Old Jake Hanlon is "ancient and craglike, weathered and withered . . . something like a worn rocky butte himself." Living in his memories, Hanlon prefers to reflect on his youth, when he lived every cowboy's dream, rather than think about the old man he has become, now labeled "a decrepit old nuisance" by the folks in town. Ultimately, it is Old Jake's recollection of the tales of his past--stories of endurance, strength, compassion, and cunning--that helps prepare him for death.

When Tanya Ward Goodman came home to New Mexico to visit her dad at the end of 1996, he was fifty-five years old and just beginning to show symptoms of the Alzheimer’s disease that would kill him six years later. Early onset dementia is a shock and a challenge to every family, but the Wards were not an ordinary family. Ross Ward was an eccentric artist and collector whose unique museum, Tinkertown, brought visitors from all over the world to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque. In this book Tanya tells Ross’s story and her own, sharing the tragedy and the unexpected comedy of caring for this funny, stubborn man who remained a talented artist even as he changed before his family’s eyes.ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORSTanya Ward Goodman’s essays have appeared in the Cup of Comfort anthology series, Literary Mama, The Huffington Post, and TheNextFamily.com. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.ACCLAIM"This is a beautiful and gentle portrait of a wonderful man with a terrible disease, and of the love his family brings to dealing with that disease. The story is written with exquisite clarity and simplicity, humor, and insight that is moving and truly instructive at the same time. Leaving Tinkertown is a compassionate, and thoroughly entertaining memoir about growing old, and also about growing up, and about letting go. Though not sentimental, it reeks of love and true intimacy. it also describes a magical carnival world, the man who built that world, and the family who made it work. In all, this is one of the most special books I have read in a long while, and I will give it to many friends as a true gift from the heart."-- John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War and On Top of Spoon Mountain"This memoir is a lovely rendering of the pain and difficulty involved in watching a beloved parent succumb to Alzheimer's Disease. But more subtly and importantly, it's about the benefits and detriments of an eccentric childhood. Tanya Ward Goodman writes about both subjects with full sincerity and great humor."-- Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad and Stretch“Leaving Tinkertown will crack you up, make you cry, grip your heart, and move you to live to the absolute hilt.-- Heather King, author of Parched and Shirt of Flame"Tanya Ward Goodman, writing with a big heart, clear eyes, and a light touch, allows us a privileged glimpse into the shabby, enchanted world of traveling carnivals, roadside attractions, and a beloved, eccentric father’s descent into Alzheimers. Just as her dad animated the handcarved, miniature western world of Tinkertown from coat hangers, inner tubes and old sewing machine motors, Tanya Ward Goodman has fashioned her complex and often hilarious memories into a beguiling, wry, and moving work of art."-- Michelle Huneven, author of Blame"Tanya Ward Goodman has written a book full of light and love, about a thoroughly modern family who find unique connections amid complicated loss. This book is not just a testimony to the influence of the larger-than-life father whose existence -- and illness -- power the narrative, it is also a statement about the luminous presence that same man leaves behind in all those he loved and who loved him. Leaving Tinkertown teaches us about devotion, loyalty and inheritance, and all their profoundest truths."-- Vicki Forman, author of This Lovely Life, winner of the PEN Center Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize“Goodman writes beautifully. The characters are well drawn, compelling, and convincing. Most importantly, the book has genuine emotional power, which builds as the story unfolds, even though how it will end is understood from the beginning.”-- Frank Huyler, author of The Blood of Strangers

The Hero Twins tells the story of two brothers born to Changing Woman and trained by the Holy People to save their people from the naayéé’, a race of monsters. But the naayéé’ can’t be beaten alone. Family and friends and wise mentors must lead any warrior down the good path toward victory. Colorful illustrations show the action as the twins seek out their father to receive the weapons they need to face the greatest monster of them all: Yé’iitsoh.Told in Navajo, the Diné language, and English, this story exists in many versions, and all demonstrate the importance of thinking, patience, persistence, bravery, and reverence. These teachings still help the Diné—and everyone—find the harmony of a balanced and braver life.ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORSJim Kristofic grew up on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona and has worked on and off the “Rez” for more than ten years as a river guide, park ranger, journalist, ranch hand, and oral historian. He’s written for the Navajo Times, Arizona Highways, High Country News, and Native Peoples Magazine. His memoir, Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life, was a finalist for the 2012 Spur Award and was named a 2011 Southwest Book of the Year.Nolan Karras James is an artist, songwriter, powwow dancer, guitarist, and former rodeo cowboy from Piñon, Arizona. His father is Many Goats Clan (Tł’izi Lání) and his mother is Apache (Chíshí).ACCLAIM“James’s vivid pencils combine elements of geometric Navajo symbolism and iconography with a superheroic comic-book sensibility brought to both the brothers and the terrifying creatures they battle.” -- Publishers Weekly“A thrillingly melodramatic tale kept close to its Navajo roots.” -- Kirkus Reviews

Life in the parched landscape of El Paso is the setting for this book of stories about people navigating their way through dysfunctional lives with the help of friends and family—people like Moníca Montoya, a housewife and mother whose affair leaves her pregnant, causing her to revisit the legacy of her father, a man who maintained two separate families on either side of the Mexican-American border. In spite of their bad choices, the characters in this collection never give up.ABOUT THE AUTHORChristine Granados was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She has worked as a journalist for the El Paso Times and the Austin American-Statesman. Currently she is a reporter at the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post.ACCLAIM“Sharply realized fiction located in a vibrant community.” -- Kirkus Reviews “Granados’s characters’ voices ring true in these peeks into everyday life on the Texas-Mexico border.” -- Booklist

Located at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula in the heart of what is now the city's Mission District, the Mission of San Francisco de Asís, established in 1776, was the sixth to be founded in the Alta California mission system. Northern California was home to many small tribal communities when the Franciscans began developing missions in the area in 1769. While no firsthand written accounts exist of Bay Area Indians' experiences at Mission San Francisco, there is evidence that, just as Hispanic colonists introduced Hispanic cultural customs to California, Bay Area Indians retained their own cultural traditions as they entered the missions.In this finely crafted study Quincy Newell examines the complexity of cultural contact between Franciscans and the native populations at Mission San Francisco. Records of traditional rituals and lifeways taking place alongside introduced doctrines and practices reveal the various ways California Indians adopted, adapted, and rejected aspects of mission life. Using baptismal, marriage, and death records to tell the history of these colonized peoples, Newell demonstrates that the priests' conversion and Hispanicization of the Bay Area Indians remained partial at best.

First published in 1994 and now available again, this Spanish Borderlands classic recounts Jesuit colonization of the Old California, the peninsula now known as Baja California. Jesuit missionaries founded their first settlement in 1697 and unintentionally created a Hispanic society that outlived the missions and their Indian converts. The author brings to light Jesuit missionization and culture, European-Indian contacts, mission and presidio operations, family social life, the unique peninsular economy, and the Jesuit expulsion. Four appendices provide data on Spanish kings, royal officials, Jesuit personnel and visitors, and founders of pre-1768 peninsular California families.

In this sixth volume of the Grandmother Stories, Murv Jacob and Deborah Duvall blend two ancient Cherokee tales into an adventure story. Ji-Stu, the Cherokee trickster Rabbit, sets out to prove that he can magically be transformed into a great singer whose voice will rival that of Redbird. To gain such fame, Ji-Stu must travel far from home to a strange land and into a dark forest, where shadows prevail and danger lurks behind every tree."The Grandmother Stories are eloquent, beautifully illustrated tales that capture the imagination of Native America. Deborah L. Duvall and Murv Jacob have done a brilliant job of revisiting the mythic world of Rabbit, Bear, and Otter and introducing them to a contemporary audience. These characters are timeless, as are their stories, and readers of all ages will delight in their antics and unique insights."--Teresa Miller, director, Center for Poets and Writers, Tulsa, Oklahoma

In 1806, U.S. Army General James Wilkinson assigned Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike to explore the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers. From St. Louis, the lieutenant's modest party traveled across the Great Plains to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Throughout the journey, Pike maintained a journal, describing terrain, Indians, hardships, and the group's daily activities. In present-day southern Colorado's San Luis Valley, Pike and his men were captured by the Spanish and taken to Santa Fe, where many of his papers were confiscated by Spanish authorities, not to be uncovered until the early twentieth century.Pike was taken south by the Spanish to Chihuahua, Mexico. Along the route, he was a keen observer of Spanish settlements, military strength, commerce, natural resources, Indian tribes, and more. Finally, the Spanish governor had Pike and his party escorted through Texas, to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where they arrived on July 1, 1807. This valuable and long-out-of-print edition of Pike's Southwestern journals is being reissued on the bicentennial of the journey. Editors Hart and Hulbert provide extensive commentary to the journals, as well as significant essays on Pike's papers and the purpose of his famed expedition.

The First Tortilla is a moving, bilingual story of courage and discovery. A small Mexican village is near starvation. There is no rain, and the bean and squash plants are dying. Jade, a young village girl, is told by a blue hummingbird to take a gift to the Mountain Spirit. Then it will send the needed rain. Burning lava threatens her, but Jade reaches the top of the volcano. The Mountain Spirit is pleased. It allows the ants in a nearby cave to share their corn with Jade. The corn was sweet and delicious and Jade took some back to save the village. Jade grinds the dry corn, adds water, and makes dough. She pats the masa and places it on hot stones near the fire. She has made the first tortilla. Soon the making of corn tortillas spreads throughout Mexico and beyond.Reading level: grade 3 and up

First published in 1954 and long out of print, this novel of pre-Hispanic Indian life in the Southwest combines the authenticity of an anthropological report with the suspense of a mystery novel. The author, best known as an anthropologist during his lifetime, is now recognized as a major Native American novelist. Hitherto virtually unknown, Runner in the Sun is sure to take its place next to McNickle's The Surrounded, also available from UNM Press, as a classic of Native American fiction.

Baby Jack lives with his family--Mother Jack, Father Jack, and sister Jumping Jack--in a big mesquite thicket near Mount Baldy. A funny fellow with long legs and long ears, he loves to jump around the mesa. Join Baby Jack in the first book of the Mesaland Series as he explores the desert and encounters other creatures, including a little bee, a grasshopper, and a pile of big red ants.First published between 1943 and 1949 and now available again, the seven books in the Mesaland Series introduce a new generation of readers to the animals and plants of the great Southwest.