Upcoming Events Sponsored or Co-sponsored by The Friends
Apple-licious Bake Sale September 27, 2025 (9-11 am)
It’s a new event for us, featuring all apple based treats. Yum.
Halloween Book Bash October 25, 2025
While other venues offer sweets for the mouth during the Crystal Falls "Candy Bash", with our "Book Bash," the Friends' offer food for the mind with free books for kids.
Authorpalooza December 13, 2025
Local and nearby authors sell books just in time for the holidays.
Cookie Walk December 20, 2025 (10 am to 2 pm)
The Friends offer a cookie walk with a baked cookie sale (and coffee and juice station).
U.P. Notable Author Zoomchats
October 9, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Carol L. Schultz discusses The Story of Journey: The Great Horned Owl.
November 13, 2025: (6:00 pm) Patricia Graham, author Loren Graham's wife discusses A Face in the Rock: The Tale of a Grand Island Chippewa.
December 11, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Larry Jorgensen discusses Make It Go ... In the Snow: A History of People and Ideas in the History of Snowmobiles.
Prior Events
On July 12, 2025 The Friends sponsored our second annual Ice Cream Social for the community.
On December 21, 2024 the Friends library sponsored the SECOND ANNUAL COOKIE WALK.
Friends Baking Elves ready for the rush
Friends Board member Mary Ann Keil, Friends Board President Janet Wagner | Friend Debbie Dueter | Board member Joan Kupchynsky:
On December 14, 2024 the library sponsored the SIXTH ANNUAL AUTHOR PALOOZA featuring five authors with ties to the U.P. As usual, The Friends provided yummy snacks.
Top left: Carol Schultz. Top Center: M Kelly Peach. Top Right: Friends Secretary Peg Padilla selling great merch.
Bottom Left: Sally Heidtke. Bottom Center: Nikki Mitchell. Bottom Right: Deborah McKinzie.
That evening the Friends and Ryan O'Grady jointly sponsored showing "The Grinch" at the Crystal Theater. Some folks dressed up for the occasion:
November 20, 2024:Ladies Night Out The Friends' intrepid gift wrappers, Maureen Elson, Mary Ann Keil, and Ann Blum
October 2024:Halloween Book Bash (Books are sugar free and cause no cavities)
Waiting for the rush
Big smiles all around
I found mine!
August, 2024
Always a highlight of the SUMMER READINGN PROGRAM, sponsored by the Friends, is when the kids get to trade in "book bucks" earned throughout the summer for new books. Pictured is the display from which the children will choose.
On July 6, 2024 The Friends sponsored an Ice Cream Social for the community.
Blind Date with a Book. February 11, 2023:
The Friends sponsored the second annual Blind Date with a Book, this year featuring a trivia contest.What the heck is a blind date book? Earlier in the week, The Friends wrapped a bunch of library books and labeled them to let patrons know what kind of book it was. But people had to check out and unwrap it to find out the book's author or title. How fun is that?
Blind date books ready to meet their readers
Trivia Prizes
Trivia Quizmaster Evelyn Gathu
The Grand Prize Winners: Janet Wagner, Mary Ann Keil, Browning Kittleson, and Dana Kittleson
Prior U.P. Notable Author Zoomchats
September 11, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Sharon Dilworth discussed To Be Marquette: A Novel.
August 14, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Joseph Heywood discussed Limpy's Adult Lexicon: Unexpurgated As Overheard and Noodled.
July 10, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Joan H. Young discussed How to Hike the North Country Trail: Not Quite a Guide.
June 12, 2025: (6:00 pm) author J.D. Austin discussed The Last Huck: A Novel.
May 8, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Sharon Marie Brunner discussed Michigan Indian Boarding School Survivors Speak Out: A Narrative History.
April 10, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Raymond Luczak discussed Animals Out-There W-I-L-D: A Bestiary in English and ASL Gloss.
March 13, 2025: (6:00 pm) two grandchildren of author William S. Crowe discussed Lumberjack: Inside an Era in the Upper Peninsula Michigan.
February 13, 2025: (6:00 pm) author Nikki Mitchell discussed Ellie and the Midwest Goodbye.
December 12, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Steve Lehto discussed Death's Door: The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder .
November 14, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Sue Harrison discussed her novel The Midwife’s Touch.
October 10, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Peter Wurdock discussed A Nostalgic Lens: Photographs and Essays from Michigan's U.P..
September 12, 2024: (6:00 pm) members read and discussed Murder in Mackinac by Ronald J. Lewis.
August 8, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Julie Buchholtz discussedWho Am I?.
July 11, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Gregory M. Lusk discussed The Great Seney Fire: A History of the Walsh Ditch Fire of 1976.
June 13, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Rod Sadler discussed Grim Paradise: The Cold Case Search for the Mackinac Island Killer.
May 9, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Jon C. Stott discussed Yooper Ale Trails: Craft Breweries and Brewpubs of Michigan's U.P. .
April 11, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Tyler R. Tichelaar discussed his novel Odin’s Eye: A Marquette Time Travel Novel .
March 14, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Matthew Hellman discussed his horror novel The Biting Cold.
February 8, 2024: (6:00 pm) author Jennifer S. McGraw discussed The Unsolved Mysteries of Father Marquette's Many Graves.
November 9, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Larry Jorgensen discussed the 1926 rescue of the City of Bangor off the Keweenaw Peninsula in his nonfiction account Shipwrecked and Rescued: Cars and Crew: The City of Bangor.
October 26, 2023: (6:00 pm) the Marquette Poets Circle discussed their ten-year anthology Superior Voyage.
September 8, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Ann Dallman discussed her YA novel Cady and the Birchbark Box.
August 10, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Eugene Milhizer discussed his treatise Disecting Anatomy of a Murder.
June 8, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Hilton Everett Moore discussed his six short stories that make up North of Nelson: Stories of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
May 11, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Julian May discussed her children't book The Big Island: A Story of Isle Royale illustrated by John Schoenherr.
April 13, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Dorothy Paad discussed her children's book Dorothy is Moving Mountains illustrated by Matthew Forgrave.
March 9, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Phyllis Michael Wong discussed her nonfiction account of the Gossard Girls, women who sewed corsets and bras at factories in Ishpeming and Gwinn. We Kept Our Towns Growing: The Gossard Girls of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
January 12, 2023: (6:00 pm) author Sharon Kennedy discussed her connected short stories The Sideroad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County.