Review by Sharon Brunner Jon C. Stott provided a colorful and realistic view of spending time at a cabin during the course of his life in his book “Summers at the Lake: Upper Michigan Moments and Memories.” The Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) renders many opportunities to explore the historical…
Trout Fishing in our Own Lake Review by Mack Hassler Like many serious writers, this poet tinkers with his name for literary purposes. He invents an identity that links his work to the clever science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut (Kilgore Trout) as well as to the Kerouac-type Beat writer Richard…
Review by Sharon Brunner In the book A Mouse Tail on Mackinac Island written by Summer Porter a family of mice travels to Mackinac Island in search of a new home. Father Mouse is known for his love of cheese. Mother Mouse wore a white apron and sings lullabies. Max…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Allan Koski is that rare combination of an eloquent historian, talented engineer, and a storyteller with a penchant for seeing the big picture. Because I thoroughly enjoyed Koski’s Another Time, Another Place: World War II in the Pacific 1941-1944, which details the exploits of his…
Life beyond shadows, poems by t. kilgore splake (Shoe Music Press, 2021); In Other Days, Roger Craik (BlazeVox Books, 2022) Haiku and Winnie-the-Pooh Review by Mack Hassler My friend and colleague, Roger Craik, has a very nice poem on A.A. Milne in the new collection of his poems In Other…
Review by Victor R. Volkman I’ll admit it’s extremely rare for a book like Know Your Ships 2022 to cross my desk, but I am extremely impressed by the beauty and detail that it packs into such a compact, colorful, and comprehensive volume. It’s hardly bigger than an average trade…
Review by Donna Winters A Second Home is compelling, well-paced, and saturated with sound values. It offers preteen and early teen boys an excellent adventure chock full of interesting characters and excellent advice on dealing with bullies. The story opens in June 1957. The main character, 13-year-old Roger Tucker, runs…
To Build a Tunnel by Deborah K Frontiera (originally published 2004) as volume one of The Chronicles of Henry Roach-Dairier From Fandom to Full Cultural Foundation Review by Mack Hassler In modern times, we often label this sort of enthusiastic imitation of types “fandom” as in science fiction fandom or…
Review by Sharon Brunner The poems in this book, Roads Not Traveled: Collection of Poems, were inspired by Robert Frost. Travelers are strongly affected by the decisions they make, for better or worse. T. Kilgore Splake felt forced to take a path less wanted instead of a naval career. Teaching…
Review by Sharon Brunner The journey of a prominent Upper Peninsula poet, T. Kilgore Splake, was as significant as the destination, as Robert M. Zoschke details in his new biography The Road to Splake. Thomas Smith, Splake’s given name, grew up in Three Rivers, Michigan with two older sisters. His…
Review by Donna Winters Dance Your Dance, Sing Your Song, a True Story By Dorothy Paad with Heather Picotte, illustrated by Matthew Forgrave. It was the first day of orientation at Northern Michigan University and it was a total zoo. With those words, Dorothy Paad opens Dance Your Dance, Sing…
“Michigan Tech Hockey: 100 Years of Memories” just released by Bill Sproule with the help of Calvin Larson, Michigan Tech’s Assistant Athletic Director, is the definitive encyclopedia of Huskies Hockey history. The book is chock full of in-depth information on every season from 1920 to 2021 and was commissioned for…
Review by Victor R. Volkman At first glance, Joseph D. Haske’s North Dixie Highway is a rage-fueled trip through three generations of an Eastern U.P. family locked in a cycle of grinding poverty, trauma, and alcoholism. But beneath the surface there’s much more lurking as we follow this broken family…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera On the first read, A Halloween Scare in Michigan is a cute, rhymed with good rhythm children’s picture book aimed at the four-to-eight-year-old set. It has that sing-song type rhyme that kids love and rolls off the tongue with ease. Not all rhymed books achieve…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Board books are designed for the very youngest children who sit in an adult’s lap being read to, children who may still chew on and rip pages. So, they have few pages and few words on each page. All Aboard! Great Lakes has 18 pages…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Larry Buege’s autobiographical Growing Up in Sparta And Other Adventures is a story in three acts. In the first act, he describes the realities of growing up in the 1950s in a small rural Midwestern town of Sparta, Michigan (population 4,000). As the author points…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Since this reviewer, who has no talent for the visual arts, and when at her own booth at an art/craft show, often tells people, “I paint with words,” she has deep respect for visual artists in any medium. She also has two siblings in visual…
Review by Brad Gischia Have you ever seen a UFO? Perhaps your grandmother told you a scary story as a child and you later found out that it was true? Ever been for a walk in the woods and felt those little hairs on the back of your neck stand…
