Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Deborah K. Frontiera’s book Douglass Houghton: Michigan’s Pioneer Geologist, Doctor and Teacher offers a portrayal of an academically high achiever and his discovery of potential resources of a brand new state. Michigan became a state in 1837. During Douglass’ earlier years, his parents, Judge Jacob and Lydia…
Review by Deborah K Frontiera Edd Tury has been writing short stories for many years, published in several different anthologies, but until now, not collected in one volume. The Boy Who Growled at Thunder has two sections, The Big Woods, and Urban Legends, each reflecting the setting of the stories…
Review by Deborah K Frontiera Lake Superior is a random, unpredictable lake, so it is not surprising that Lynn Domina’s poetry book Inland Sea has a random order. You can open it anywhere and read one or two, pondering and digesting them for a while before flipping to another page….
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Deborah K. Frontiera’s Living on Sisu: The 1913 Union Copper Strike Tragedy offers a candid view of a violent strike against the mining companies in Houghton and Keweenaw counties of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) Twelve-year-old Emma Niemi narrated the story about her family’s participation in the strike…
Review by Deboah K Frontiera Ad Lucem is a young adult novel, part fantasy and part coming-of-age story set in the present time, presents fourteen-year-old Adam Sozie as a confused loner. The story is set in a fictional version of the Copper Country in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His parents have…
Review by Deborah K Frontiera Not so long ago, there didn’t seem to be much Upper Peninsula, Michigan, literature or poetry published. Now there is an abundance. Some skeptics might say there is enough, or think What, another UP Poetry book? Another “outsider” arriving to experience life in the woods….
Review by Deborah K Frontiera The Stormy Kromer Kitten by Erin Byrnes Bailey is a historical fiction picture book tells how the Stormy Kromer caps might have come to be. Set in 1903, George and Ida Kromer came up with an idea for a warm hat that would not blow…
Review by Mack Hassler Tantae molis erat Romanem condere gentum “How hard it was to found the race of Rome” Near the end of Book I, Vergil The Aeneid, written close to Christ’s birth I love the interplay in this epigraph between the language play in ancient thought given to…
Review by Deborah K Frontiera A Is for Agates is a great alphabet book that, literally, has it all—for the child being read to and the adult reading it to a child, or children. Words roll easily out when reading it aloud—rhymes and rhythm flow without any tongue tripping. So…
Building Kathy Ann By Robert “Buzz” Johnson Review by Deborah K Frontiera ISBN: 979-8-8956-054-8 Modern History Press, 2025, PB Ret. $21.95 If you’ve never thought about how much is involved in building a boat from the keel up, you will more than appreciate the many technical skills involved by the time…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera What can you do with a wordless picture book? Oh, let me count the ways! First, a parent or other adult can let a child, or children make up the story, and there can be many stories going on in the progression of the illustrations….
Rescuing Crash, The Good Dog: A Novel By Sue Harrison Review by Deborah K. Frontiera ISBN 979-8-89656-015-9, Modern History Press, 2025, Ret. $18.95 paperback In Rescuing Crash, The Good Dog, eleven-year-old Britta had life smack her in the face. Her mother has left the family to chase her own dreams. Dad is…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera The book’s title-poem, “Roots in Water” does not appear until close to the end of the book. It is about snipping a shoot from a bush and placing it in a pickle jar of water to grow a new plant. Simple, but also complex, since…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera The Story of Journey, an informative picture book is great for the older end of the picture book range. Filled with well researched facts about how baby owls are raised might be a bit too much for pre-k and Kindergarten children. But it is great…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera What makes us “sane” or “insane”? That is the question poet Ellen Lord explores in her collection of poems, Relative Sanity. The opening poem, “Muse”, speaks of thoughts coming to us out of silence. Then there are memories of the poet’s childhood and her unbalanced…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera If you have not read Sharon Kennedy’s first two in this series, The SideRoad Kids, and The SideRoad Kids: A Summer of Discovery, it won’t matter since the final volume has plenty of backstory to pull you into these characters as adults. It has been…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera This wonderful adventure of a day at the beach, told through the letters of the alphabet, not only involves words beginning with each letter but exposes children to a lot of natural science and wonder about the world around them. It even includes bits of…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera In J.D. Austin’s The Last Huck, two brothers, Nick and Jacob (who is in prison during the main time of the story) and a cousin, Pete, are faced with the necessity of selling the last bit of family land in Upper Michigan’s Houghton County. They…
