Enchanted gifts: Looking for a last-minute holiday present? Here are some books with New Mexico connections

Here’s a short list of books with New Mexico connections that might fit as last-minute holiday gifts.

“What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs” by Sharman Apt Russell.

Russell, an esteemed nature/science writer, begins her book by telling readers that she and a friend had been observing wildlife tracks for about a decade. They helped monitor the movement of black bears and mountain lions in New Mexico for an environmental group. Later, they studied together in an evaluation process that certifies wildlife tracks.

The environmental group also wanted to know about any threatened and endangered species, such as the reintroduced Mexican gray wolf.

Enchanted gifts: Looking for a last-minute holiday present? Here are some books with New Mexico connections

Tracking animals, Russell writes, prompted her to think about the challenges to wildlife beyond New Mexico and the Southwest. Russell’s scope widens to include North America. She also looks into the influence of global warming on the numbers and status of wildlife.

The author lives a few miles from the Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico.

Priyanka Kumar, a Santa Fe-based writer, said in a blurb that “Russell’s lucid and engaging voice helps us decipher wildlife tracks while greatly enriching our lexicon of the natural world.”

“Alfie Explores A to Z: A Seek & Find Adventure” by Jeff Drew.

This children’s picture book is one of the most imaginative, most cheerful, and funniest that you are likely to come across.

It is a book that teaches children about the alphabet, about poetry, about learning new words and the literary device alliteration. An underlying point of the book is to make learning fun.

Meet Alfie the adventurous bookworm. He’s lost Betty, his pet dust bunny and very best friend.

The letter A gets things started. This is the first paragraph of a four-paragraph poem for the letter A: “Alfie’s search for Betty begins on an autumn day,/With an Awesome Assembly of Animals/already underway …”

Each facing page has a jumble of words for each letter of the alphabet.

So, for example, the facing page for A contains objects whose names start with the letter A. Objects such as anteater, aluminum foil, an ape in an astronaut’s suit playing an accordion, an A-frame house, a cat dressed as an angel holding an angel food cake, an antenna, a chart showing the human anatomy. See what words you can find on each crazy quilt of objects.

Drew, the author/illustrator of the book, is an Albuquerque resident. “Alfie Explores A to Z” is his first picture book.

“Triviappolis Treasures: Albuquerque Trivia”

With the rising popularity of trivia games, this book would be a good resource for questions about Albuquerque and environs. Here are a handful of questions (sans answers) from the book:

Which tech billionaire was born in Albuquerque in 1964?

It was a mining town, then a ghost town, and now it’s an artsy community that makes a great day trip from Albuquerque. What’s its name?

Writers Erna Fergusson, Ernie Pyle, Rudolfo Anaya and Tony Hillerman all lived in Albuquerque, and now have what sort of institutions named for them?

The volume on Albuquerque trivia is one of 51 in the “Triviappolis Treasures” series about cities in the United States and Canada.

Albuquerque is the only New Mexico city in this series, however not every question in the volume is about the Duke City. Example: What’s the name of the building that was the seat of government in New Mexico for centuries and is now the location of the state’s history museum?

(Sorry, no spoilers)

The book is available at amazon.com.

“Enchantment: A New Mexican Cookbook” is the title of a new book that is way more than a mouthful. That’s because there are more than 1,200 traditional recipes from The Land of Enchantment between its covers.

Art Pollard compiled the recipes, organizing and sorting them by topic and by dish.

Topics include vegetables, salads, appetizers, sandwiches, soups and stews, salsas, sauces, breads, desserts, and as you might expect, an array of main dishes; among those are burritos, carne adovada, chimichangas, enchiladas, fajitas … and 20 types of flautas!

Pollard said that the recipes were “taken from a number of classic New Mexican cookbooks, many of which have been out of print for 30 years or more.”

He claims that his compilation is the largest collection of New Mexican recipes ever published.

Pollard credits the publication that the recipe originally appeared in, the person who contributed the recipe to the publication, and the year the recipe was published.

Pollard, who spent some years growing up in Los Alamos, currently lives in Provo, Utah. He said the book is available on his website newmexicancookbook.com and on amazon.com.

“America’s Women Down Range” is a large-format book by Steve Clevenger, a Santa Fe-based photojournalist.

Inside, Clevenger documents women serving — or have served — in active-duty roles in the American military. The book, according to a news release, considers 12 women Clevenger has met in recent years — some were on assignment overseas, some were at their home bases in the United States and others he met through the Warrior Games and other programs for military veterans.

“The New Mexicans, 1981-83” by Kevin Bubriski.

Through his photography, Bubriski documents the lives of Hispanics, Native Americans and Anglos in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico villages.

It is a follow-up to Bubriski’s book “Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida, ’81-’83,” a photo-documentation of Hispanic New Mexicans.

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If you are thinking of a poetry book or three as gifts, consider these titles — “Latitude N 35.1891°/Longitude W 106.6173°: Poems of Place” by Lou Liberty, a Los Ranchos de Albuquerque resident; “Love Lessons, Poems 1973-2023” by Mary Ellen Capek, an Albuquerque resident; and “Light of Wings, Poems” by Sarah Kotchian, also a resident of Albuquerque.