Santa Fe’s El Zaguán awarded HSNM’s Pablita Velarde Award
HSFF Executive Director Melanie McWhorter, HSNM President Joseph Britton, and author Robynne Mellor at the 2025 HSNM Awards Banquet (photo by Oliver Horn)
Santa Fe’s El Zaguán/El Zaguán de Santa Fe cover with mini adobe bricks from Family Days.
Earlier this year, Historical Society of New Mexico Awards Committee recognized the children’s activity book Santa Fe’s El Zaguán/El Zaguán de Santa Fe as the 2025 selection for the HSNM Pablita Velarde award. This award recognizes an outstanding children’s publication related to New Mexico or Southwest borderlands history. The children’s activity book includes sections and conversation starters designed to help children and their caregivers and families discuss their home neighborhood, vegetation, and cultural practices and how these shape identity and sense of place.
Readers enjoyed the well-thought-out presentation of the book and felt it was an important contribution to New Mexico’s cultural history and overview of its built environment that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike. “El Zaguan is a delightful, highly approachable, and useful educational text that is both informative and fun.” Reviewers felt the book could be used for teaching purposes in and out of the classroom and that its presentation could be well adapted to other locales around the state. — from an email from HSNM’s Dennis Daily
The Historical Society of New Mexico held its annual conference at the Las Cruces Convention Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, September 25-27, 2025. The awards banquet was held on the evening of Saturday, September 27, where award winners were recognized. More on the conference here: https://hsnm.org/history-conference/
We are delighted that the HSNM honored the writer Robynne Mellor and illustrator David-Alexander Hubbard Sloan for their contributions to HSFF’s bilingual publication Santa Fe’s El Zaguán/El Zaguán de Santa Fe. HSFF recognizes that this is truly an honor for Historic Santa Fe Foundation and all of the book's contributors. We are grateful to the author, Robynne Mellor, who attended the conference (shown here with HSFF Executive Director Melanie McWhorter). The illustrator David Sloan, who could not make it last night, was invaluable to the project. HSFF must send a thanks to Anne McDonald Culp for her nomination of the publication.
We could not have done it without the example of HSFF's previous children's publication, We’re So Lucky to Live in Santa Fe, and the publication committee who helped us with their invaluable advice. Finally, we extend our thanks to the donors — including Century Bank and Sam’s Club — and grant sponsor New Mexico Humanities Council. This project was part of a grant from NMHC for our Family Days program where children were able to attend a day-long event of adobe making and garden education at our home El Zaguán and received a copy of the children's activity book at no charge. We plan to host Family Days again in 2026.
