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I discovered birds rather late in life, almost by accident, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a small western Ethiopian town, an experience that stimulated my passion to know all kinds of birds and, in the process, to know the people and places where they lived. My ultimate career choice of ethnobiology, combining cognitive and environmental analysis, was a perfect synthesis of my various scholarly passions. My subsequent studies of Mayan and Zapotec Indian communities in Mexico and Native North American communities in the Pacific Northwest broadened the scope of my research to include all kinds of animals, plants, and fungi, all the living things we share with Indigenous people.
Snorkeling in a Hawaiian reef took on new dimensions for me in reading this book. Johannes–a noted fisheries biologist–went to Palau in Micronesia to study the breeding biology of tropical reef fishes. There, he came to deeply appreciate the extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the local subsistence fishermen who had contributed to his research. Their expert knowledge of the behavior and breeding cycles of local reef fishes was hard-earned through a lifetime of careful observation in pursuit of their livelihood.
By contrast, the expert knowledge of Johannes and his academic colleagues was broad but shallow. Combining Indigenous and academic expertise enhanced both. We also learn how Palauan communities conserved the resources of their reefs, practices disrupted by colonial administrations.
Words of the Lagoon is an account of the pioneering work of a marine biologist to discover, test, and record the knowledge possessed by native fisherman of the Palau Islands of Micronesia.
I discovered birds rather late in life, almost by accident, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a small western Ethiopian town, an experience that stimulated my passion to know all kinds of birds and, in the process, to know the people and places where they lived. My ultimate career choice of ethnobiology, combining cognitive and environmental analysis, was a perfect synthesis of my various scholarly passions. My subsequent studies of Mayan and Zapotec Indian communities in Mexico and Native North American communities in the Pacific Northwest broadened the scope of my research to include all kinds of animals, plants, and fungi, all the living things we share with Indigenous people.
I embarked on my ethnobiological career as a graduate student and shortly learned I was not alone. My fellow student north of the border, Nancy Turner, was likewise passionately engaged with ethnobotany for her thesis. Turner was trained as a botanist but then devoted her decades-long academic career to documenting how her Indigenous neighbors and friends in British Columbia recognize, name, cultivate, and respect the botanical riches of their millennial homeland.
A key principle clearly articulated by her Indigenous teachers is that plants are our kin and that “everything is one,” so we must all live together in a harmonious balance. People must “look after” the land and support its many “persons.” This Indigenous wisdom is never abstract, but in Turner’s telling, it is always exemplified by real people, specific plants, and particular places.
This is a thought-provoking look at Native American stories, cultural institutions, and ways of knowing, and what they can teach us about living sustainably.
I discovered birds rather late in life, almost by accident, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a small western Ethiopian town, an experience that stimulated my passion to know all kinds of birds and, in the process, to know the people and places where they lived. My ultimate career choice of ethnobiology, combining cognitive and environmental analysis, was a perfect synthesis of my various scholarly passions. My subsequent studies of Mayan and Zapotec Indian communities in Mexico and Native North American communities in the Pacific Northwest broadened the scope of my research to include all kinds of animals, plants, and fungi, all the living things we share with Indigenous people.
I have shelves full of bird guides to all sorts of places. However, this guide is unique. It is a “bird guide” to the exotic avifauna of highland Papua New Guinea as understood by and in the words of a native.
It honors a decades-long collaboration between the ethnobiologist Bulmer and his Kalam colleague and teacher, Saem Majnep. This began when Bulmer arrived to document the ethnozoological knowledge and ecological practices of this isolated Papuan community. Saem Majnep, then a young boy, eagerly assisted.
The book is a conversation: Saem Majnep describes all the birds of his local habitat, writing in his native language. Bulmer then provides an academic perspective on Saem Majnep’s ethno-ornithology. Here, we have the benefit of a binocular vision of the avian worlds of this little-known corner of our planet.
I discovered birds rather late in life, almost by accident, as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a small western Ethiopian town, an experience that stimulated my passion to know all kinds of birds and, in the process, to know the people and places where they lived. My ultimate career choice of ethnobiology, combining cognitive and environmental analysis, was a perfect synthesis of my various scholarly passions. My subsequent studies of Mayan and Zapotec Indian communities in Mexico and Native North American communities in the Pacific Northwest broadened the scope of my research to include all kinds of animals, plants, and fungi, all the living things we share with Indigenous people.
I first encountered Nelson’s arctic stories in his account of the sea-ice survival techniques he learned as an apprentice to Inuit whalers of Wainwright, Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean shore. I followed his adventures south to the sub-arctic muskeg home of the Koyukon, an Athabaskan people at home on the Koyukon River, a northern tributary of the great Yukon.
His book, Make Prayers to the Raven, is a deep dive into the daily lives and worldview of the Koyukon. Their ancestors survived in the harsh climate of the Arctic Circle for 10,000 years by respecting the power of their animal and plant neighbors, their spiritual kin. Nelson's sensitive storytelling makes the Koyukon voices loud and clear.
As a kid growing up in the northeast of England I became fascinated by the insects, flowers, birds, geology, and seashore life around me. That fascination with natural history never left me and I had the fortune to turn my childhood interests into a professional career as a research scientist, teacher, and writer. My work on pollinators and plants has taken me around the world, from the grasslands of Oxfordshire to the deserts of Namibia and the mountains of Nepal, from the rainforests of Brazil and Australia to the thorny shrublands of Tenerife. The result has been more than 135 articles plus a couple of books. I must get back to writing the next one…
I bought this book for my daughter Ellen when she was 3 or 4
years old, and I think I was even more enchanted than she was! It's a
wonderfully told and illustrated story about the animals that live in
and around the giant saguaro cactuses in the deserts of the USA and
Mexico. The pollinators are birds during the day and bats at night,
and this book provides a child's-eye view of some of the science. Ellen is now 31...where
does the time go?
Children are our future and the ways in which we influence them will
have enormous consequences for the fate of our planet, including how
we conserve bees, birds, bats, and other pollinators. Books such as
this are so important – every child should have access to them, at
home, at school, or in public libraries.
It is another hot day in the desert. Birds and other animals scurry about looking for food. When they get tired they stop to rest at a giant cactus. It is their hotel in the desert!
Many different animals live in the cactus hotel. It protects them; and they protect it, by eating the pests that could harm the cactus.
The cactus grows larger and larger and will live for about two hundred years. When one animal moves out, another moves in. There is never a vacancy in the cactus hotel.
This story--about a desert, a giant cactus, and the…
As a writer, I’m especially fascinated by plants and animals that no one loves. My books are intended to get kids excited about science and help them appreciate the wonders of the natural world. Many years of fieldwork, leading children on nature walks, have given me firsthand experience in introducing students to the terrors and joys of nature. I especially enjoy the beauties of the night, from fireflies to coyote howls to star-gazing!
I once was lucky enough to spend a night camping in the desert under a saguaro cactus. These big, human-looking cacti are magnificent, and this book really captures how important they are to the desert and all the animals that live there. Beautiful illustrations really make me remember that night under the stars and how impressive the giant saguaros are. I’ve learned that when kids feel a sense of awe toward nature, that’s the first step in becoming an environmentalist.
As the summer sun sets over the Arizonan desert, wildlife gathers to witness a very special annual event. The night flower is about to bloom. This celebration transforms the quiet desert for just a short few hours into a riot of colour and sound, as mammals and insects congregate from miles away to take part in this miracle of nature. From pollinating fruit bats to howling mice and reptilian monsters, explore the unusual wildlife the desert has to offer in this beautiful rhyming non-fiction picture book.
I am a child sexual abuse survivor who struggled for years with the help of therapy to become the person I am today. My sister, my mother, and I suffered years of emotional abuse by my father. When I was a child, my best friend (who also suffered abuse by her brother) and I made up stories that helped us navigate the situations in our families. I read, hiked, backpacked, and traveled alone for years in order to take
risks and develop strength before attempting to write at age sixty-one. I love books that put me solidly in time and place and deeply empathize with characters who struggle and grow to become their genuine selves.
I love this book because the protagonist—gritty, hard-talking heart-of-gold Ruby Fortune—is a lady as tough as the Arizona land she comes from and loves. She cusses and shoots, rides horses, entertains and cooks, and takes no guff from men. But first, she must rid herself of an abusive husband in order to save herself and her young boys.
I am partial to a cast of characters in what I read, and a remarkable cast joins her in this exquisitely written story. Her father Big Burl, her chosen mother who’s a madame, the Shakespeare-quoting drunk she puts up in her barn, the law man, and the black miner with whom she secretly falls in love.
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot.…
I’ve been fascinated by the power of place since I was tiny. I grew up as the child of British parents in New England, then lived several places before settling a few miles from where I started. As a writer, I come back again and again to how we relate to the land around us, and especially to the magic, lore, and traditions of our homes. We choose some of these, but others surprise us or are part of chance discoveries. I hope you enjoy these books that explore the power and magic of place as much as I have!
Much of Windling’s work as an editor has revolved around fairy tales and the power of story. The Wood Wifecombines those with poetry and a tremendous love for the American Southwest (near Tucson, Arizona).
I love this book for the way it brings all those threads together and weaves them into something new, but something with long sturdy roots that anchor it in place, in time and history, and in both the personal and the mythical.
Leaving behind her fashionable West Coast life, Maggie Black comes to the Southwestern desert to pursue her passion and her dream. Her mentor, the acclaimed poet Davis Cooper, has mysteriously died in the canyons east of Tucson, bequeathing her his estate and the mystery of his life--and death.
Maggie is astonish by the power of this harsh but beautiful land and captivated by the uncommon people who call it home--especially Fox, a man unlike any she has ever known, who understands the desert's special power.
As she reads Cooper's letters and learns the secrets of his life, Maggie comes face-to-face…
I have a thing about bunnies! My first plush toy was a rabbit named Boing Boing and I had a pet lop-eared bunny named Br’er. The first book I wrote in my series was The Night Before Easter because I wanted to write a story for kids who love bunnies and Easter - like me! When I was a child I also liked to read books by Beatrix Potter and hope to one day visit her house in England.
This is another book about appreciating differences told with in-your-face humor using a case of mistaken identity. When a chipmunk accuses a hare of being a rabbit, the hare stands up for itself. In doing so, hare describes the traits of a hare versus a jackrabbit. It’s a simple way to show kids the difference between animals that seem alike but are not. Like a turtle and a tortoise. Turns out chipmunk is not who hare thinks he is! A fun way to learn about desert creatures.
An exasperated hare and plucky squirrel engage in a battle of wits to determine who's who in this hilarious author-illustrator debut for fans of I Yam a Donkey and Grumpy Monkey. When a chipmunk mistakes Hare for a rabbit, Hare puts him in his place. But actually, the chipmunk is a SQUIRREL. Or so he says. Ever wondered about the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? Or a sheep and goat? So have Rabbit and Chipmunk-er, I mean, Hare and Squirrel! This hilarious look at dynamic duos in the animal kingdom pokes fun at the lookalike animals we all…
I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
Saguaro Sanction is the eighth book in Scott Graham’s National Park Mystery series.
I have read every one of Graham’s books, because I love being swept into the backcountry of one of the nation’s national parks and learning about issues that affect that particular location. I also love characters Chuck Bender, an archeologist, his wife Janelle Ortega, and her two daughters Carmelita and Rosie.
Graham is a master storyteller and provides a perfect balance as he weaves in details about this engaging family, the vivid descriptions of park landscapes, and educational elements to deliver an entertaining mystery.
Saguaro Sanction focuses on the cultural and historic aspects of Saguaro National Park and its mystery stands alone, but for the full scope of the characters’ stories, start with book one, Canyon Sacrifice.
Janelle Ortega and Chuck Bender are drawn deep into a threatening web of hostility and deceit in Saguaro National Park in this page-turner of a mystery.
"A winning blend of archaeology and intrigue, Graham's series turns our national parks into places of equal parts beauty, mystery, and danger.” —EMILY LITTLEJOHN, author of Lost Lake
When Janelle Ortega’s cousin from Mexico is found brutally murdered at a remote petroglyph site in Saguaro National Park, she and her husband, archaeologist Chuck Bender, are drawn deep into a threatening web of hostility and deceit stretching south across the US-Mexico border and back in…
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