The Great Lakes: A Literary Field Guide

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The Great Lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario—are one of the natural wonders of the world. Shaped by glaciers, the lakes and the lands around them have been home to native American nations, explorers, loggers, and farmers as well as visitors who enjoy fishing, boating, and hunting in a region known for cool summers, colorful autumns, and snowy winters. This beautifully-illustrated book conveys the region’s natural heritage through stories, poems, essays, and historical accounts. The book invites readers to meet an Ojibwe girl born in 1777 on the shores of Wisconsin’s Chequamegon Bay; spend a summer hunting for rare plants in rural Indiana or working on an organic farm; watch the Aurora Borealis from atop four hundred high dunes in Michigan. The book is filled with adventures, including crossing an ice bridge above Niagara Falls in the winter of 1899 and sailing on the schooner, "Rouse Simmons," bringing Christmas trees from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Chicago in 1912. Describing canoe trips, fishing expeditions, and encounters with moose, loons, and bears, the book features such well-known writers as Minnesota’s Sigurd Olson, Illinois’ Sandra Cisneros, Indiana’s Edwin Way Teale and Gene Stratton-Porter, and Ontario’s Margaret Atwood.

We are the Early Risers / a poem by JoAnn Early Macken --
Fairies washing / a story by April Pulley Sayre --
Chicago Waters / an essay by Susan Power --
Miracle / a poem by Gwen Hart --
Moon Magic / an essay by Sigurd F. Olson --
A Clutch of Fowers / a poem by Phyllis I. Harris --
The Ice Deer / a story by Ellen Creager --
The Gold Medal Flower / an essay by Gene Stratton-Porter --
From the Celler / a poem by William Pitt Root --
Adrift on Niagara / an essay by Charles E. Misner --
Return Portage / a poem by Louis Jenkins --
Winter Season / an essay by Bruce Catton --
Fireworks / a story by Katharine Crawford Robey --
Milwaukee River poem / a poem by Julie Parson-Nesbitt --
At Uglyfish Lake / an essay by Ellen Airgood --
Evening Flight / a story by Don Moser --
Prairie after Rain / a poem by Marcia Lipson --
Hay Field Bestiary / an essay by David Kline --
Mush Again / a poem by Lisa Wheeler --
Saving Lake Erie / an essay by Gretchen Woelfle --
The Copper Beech / a poem by Marie Howe --
A Mighty Fortress / an essay by Aldo Leopold --
The Glowing Brown Snails of Blueberry Lake / a poem by Freya Manfred --
Leaves / a story by Sara St. Antoine --
Christmas Tree Miracle / an essay by Carol Farley --
Journal Entry; Lake Michigan July / a poem by Roger Pfingston --
Summer at Silver Creek Farm / story by Shannon Sexton --
Weekend / a prose poem by Robert Alexander --
Serious Fishing / an essay by John Knott --
The Worm Girl / a poem by Laura Lush --
Neengay, the Story Giver / an essay by Day Alexander --
Apple jelly / a poem by Margaret Atwood --
The Box Camera / an essay by Edwin Way Teale --
Rain / an essay by Antwone Quenton Fisher --
Great Northern Pike / a story by Katharine Crawford Robey --
The Raccoon Brigade / a story by Pat Kertzman --
An Evening on Isle Royle / a poem by Mary Bartlett Caskey --
Four Skinny Trees / an excerpt from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros --
A Bear in the Backyard / an essay by Jack Becklund --
Hummingbird / a poem by Pamela Uschuk --
The Turtle / a story by George Vukelich --
Crows / a poem by Jill Barrie --
Shorthand on the snow / an essay by Louis W. Campbell with Claire Gavin --
First Night of Summer in Chicago / a poem by Abe Louise Young --
A Flash of Gold / a story by Marjorie Carlson Davis --
Beaver Rendezvous / an essay by Ann Cooper --
Snowy Morning with Squirrels / a poem by Raymond Souster --
Gems in the Jack Pine / An essay by Laurie Allmann