Cheryl Minnema's children's books start with a fond memory, one of many plucked from her childhood, growing up in a traditional household and part of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.
From there, though, her skills as a poet and beadworker guide her through the process.
Jack El-Hai's non-fiction book, The Lost Brothers, tells the harrowing story of three little boys, ages 8, 6 and 4, who went to the park a few blocks from their Minneapolis home 68 years ago and were never seen again.
A forgotten grocery-store box simply labeled "Fitz" was the genesis for Michael Schumacher's The Trial of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Eyewitness Accounts from the U.S. Coast Guard Hearings.
The box contained literal reams of photocopied testimony, more than 3,000 pages of documentation from the Coast Guard's reports and official inquiry into the tragedy of November 10, 1975.
You might expect the partnership of Chan Poling (TheĀ Suburbs, The New Standards) and Lucy Michell (Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles) to produce a musical - or at least an album.
But instead, they've produced a picture book.
Fellow musician Jeremy Messersmith says:
Jack and the Ghost is a gorgeously illustrated meditation on grief and loss, a poignant reminder to not let the ghosts of the past control the present.
Author John Coy thinks it's pretty cool that there's only one waterfall on the Mississippi, and that it actually moved 15 miles upstream several thousand years ago.
So he set to work distilling 12,000 years into 619 words, with the help of an artist who seemed fated to take part in the project ... and the waterfall itself.