By Ernest Dempsey Modern History Press is proud to announce that its title Cady and the Birchbark Box by Ann Dallman has won the 2022 State History Award in the Children & Youth category. Cady and the Birchbark Box is a novel for children, mainly in the age range 11…
Welcome back to another school year. Kennedy’s time machine will take you back to a simple era of the late 1950s. Find some time to read and reflect whether it’s on your own childhood or stories of the past passed from generation to generation. The SideRoad Kids follows a group…
Moose Willow Mystery begins with a suspicious death in a game-processing meat locker at the fictional village of Moose Willow. A mysterious woman makes an appearance at choir practice. Janese’s mother forces her way into the lives of George and Janese challenging their privacy and sanity. Janese joins Bertie, a…
Review by The Book Commentary Attorney at Paw: A Chrissy the Shih Tzu Cozy Mystery by Diane Wing is a fascinating read; in turn, hilarious and heartwarming. At the time that Autumn Clarke is grieving the loss of her parents, killed in a car crash, she meets Chrissy, a Shih…
In Superior Tapestry, author Deborah Frontiera combines fiction with non-fiction to create a fun fact read for adults and children. Frontiera picked 27 artifacts from UP history and gave them personality. “The stories are told from the point of view of objects,” she said. “I had a lot of fun…
True Tales: The Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by Mikel B. Claussen takes the romance out of the stories of northern Michigan. Instead, Claussen weaves a yarn of facts the way only a Yooper can. His style is approachable and very much based on the storytelling of the region,…
What worked: The book features modern-day Indians living in Upper Michigan and the importance of preserving their heritage. Cady takes a 20-minute bus ride to attend an Indian school even though a public school is located only minutes from her home. Her father isn’t knowledgeable about their tribe’s history but…
Reviewed by Megan Weiss for Reader Views (06/2022) Phil Bellfy has collected together numerous insightful, instructive, and magnificently written essays in “Honor the Earth: Indigenous Response to Environmental Degradation in the Great Lakes.” This collection serves multiple purposes: 1. To call direct attention to how western capitalist initiatives have been…
Carolyn Wilhelm’s Bookshelf Jon C. Stott delightfully described the many joys of lakeside living with the unchanging activities of summer. Deb Le Blanc’s many photographs are stunning, enriching the text. Readers will feel like they are right there at the cabin next to the author. Stott says calendars are not…
Review by Carolyn WIlhelm for MBR Pioneer days conjure up romantic, sentimental ideas of simple living and being close to nature. However, the truth also included lawless, rugged, difficult times. Native Americans and those from Europe mined, traveled, worked, logged, and sailed Lake Superior’s frontier wilderness amid uncivilized criminals, kidnappers,…
About Cady and the Birchbark Box: In Cady and the Birchbark Box, Cady Whirlwind Thunder solves the mystery behind a weathered journal found inside an old birchbark box. Why was the box buried behind a deserted garage? This is the question her friend and “crush,” John Ray Chicaug, asks Cady…
Summers at the Lake is a delightful collection of essays centered around the author’s beloved “Little cabin in the Big Woods” beside Crooked Lake in the Upper Peninsula. The humorous and meditative essays, that read like prose poetry, track the progression of the seasons. Stott aims to evoke for readers…
U.P. Reader: Bringing Upper Michigan Literature to the World Volume 6 Edited by Deborah K. Frontiera and Mikel B. Classen. It’s always a good day when this annual compendium of poems, short stories, memoirs, history, sparkling essays, and humorous pieces turns up in my mailbox. The U.P.’s rugged landscape, semi-isolation, long…
Honor the Earth: Indigenous Response to Environmental Degradation in the Great Lakes edited by Phil Bellfy. Review by Tom Powers, Michigan In Books This book of updated essays grew out of an environmental conference at MSU on Earth Day, 2007. The essays, as the subtitle suggests, are responses by Native Americans…
True Tales: the Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by Mikel B. Classen. Review by Tom Powers, Michigan in Books Even Michigan natives who know just a little about the Upper Peninsula are aware of how unique it is geographically and historically. It is a beautiful, wild, rugged, sparsely populated peninsula full…
Illustrated by Maggie Chambers, this delightful “tail” of the Mouse family honors the magic of Mackinac Island with all its little nooks and crannies. From the famous fudge to the handsome blonde dock porter Robert, the brand new book brings alive the scenes from the island. Speaking directly from the…
Digging deep into the past, U.P. author & historian Mikel Classen uncovers hidden stories in his newest release “True Tales- The Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.” Stories of piracy, lost gold mines, the origin of the Copper Boom, profiles of people of note, Starvation on Isle Royale, and one…
In his book U.P. Colony: The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan — Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries, author Phil Bellfy, P.h. D. poses the ultimate question: why has the Upper Peninsula’s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty…
By Ernest Dempsey- Modern History Press is proud to announce that its title I Miss the Rain in Africa: Peace Corps as a Third Act by Nancy Daniel Wesson has become a Nautilus Award Winner. I Miss the Rain in Africa won the 2022 Silver Nautilus Award in the category…
By Ernest Dempsey This month, an experienced educator and passionate writer officially debuted as a children’s book author with her first book A Mouse Tail on Mackinac Island published by the Modern History Press of Michigan. Meet Summer Porter, an elementary school teacher of over 25 years, who grew up…
