Mackinac Island Press
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Mackinac Island Press, [1] is a national publisher of children's books, where it jumped onto the national stage with Has Anyone Seen Christmas? The book was featured across the country by Barnes & Noble and featured on Fox & Friends morning show, the Chicago Tribune, Associated Press and other prominent media outlets and ultimately hitting a top 50 ranking at Amazon and BN.com. The book has been turned into a float for America's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Negotiations were started with Disney and other film companies to take the book to the big screen. In 2006 they released Gitchi Gumee, based on Longfellow's famous poem, and it went on to win the Midwest Booksellers Association Children's Picture Book of the Year Honor Book Award. That year they acquired rights to the Buck Wilder property and released their first Buck Wilder Adventure chapter books for children [2] and the PaleoJoe Dinosaur Detective Club series [3]. Buck Wilder books have sold over 370,000 since their debut and the Buck Wilder character had been put into every 4th grade classroom by the State of Michigan to help make kids active and interested in the outdoors. The PaleoJoe brand was launched by FOX TV in a pilot test for the State of Michigan and its success has plans by FOX to go national with the PaleoJoe Ultimate Field Trip for fall 2008.
In 2007, those chapter books series expanded with additional books and they also added a new series by an emerging writer, Wendy Caszatt-Allen, Adventures of Pachelot. Caszatt-Allen's writing has been called, "Like movies for the brain" and she is a graduate from Interlochen Center for the Arts where many famous artists, musicians and writers have come from, including a large percentage of the NY Philharmonic. The first volume in the series, Last Voyage of the Griffon, immediately had it films rights optioned by Brauer Productions, [4] who has worked with Pixar, Fox and MTV.
2007 brought on an innovative new line of books by dollmaker, artisit and author, Tracy Gallup [5]. A Crazy Little Series by Gallup premiered with Stone Crazy, Shell Crazy, Tree Crazy and Snow Crazy, with the illustrations in the book comprising of Gallup's unique handmade dolls. Gallup is scheduled to release A Roomful of Questions in fall of 2008 and early reviews from key people in the book and library markets have identified it as one of the key books for Christmas 2008 and a launching point for Gallup's books.
In the fall of 2007, Mackinac Island Press was now garnering a very large national following from bookstores for its unique content and innovative art and production values with its books, now released a book by Dan Haseltine, lead singer of Jars of Clay, [6] a multi-Grammy, multi-platinum Christian rock band that was one of the first Christian rock bands to cross over into the mainstream market. The book, Magnificent Me, with Michigan illustration Joel Schoon Tanis, was also making a major move to mainstream and Christian markets. Tanis recently won 6 Regional Emmys for his children's television show, Come On Over, [7] The book was in Ingram's Top 1o Children's bestsellers, including a number of weeks at #1 for much of that fall.
2008 features another book by Anne Margaret Lewis (Has Anyone Seen Christmas?), 'Twas the Night Before Summer, which is being featured by libraries and a large number of bookstores across the United States. Lewis is also rumored to be working on another book for Christmas 2008 that is getting interest from the book and library markets.
Long-term plans stated by the company include a continuation of expanding their current publishing brands and the announcement of new properties that will have a large and long-term reach into the marketplace.
