What Mr. Derleth has done [in "Village Year"] is simply to set down the observations that personally interested him day to day or month to month [in and about Sac Prairie]; and his book thus has the distinction and personal appeal of an entirely unforced chronicle from a little American town and a loved American countryside. "Village Year" is not a memory of pioneers nor a picture either of revenants seeking rural simplicity or survivors still enisled in it, but an actual evocation of a fairly typical community in its ordinary life today. And because Mr. Derleth has a poetic love for Nature and awareness of Nature's richly varied minutiae, there is often a haunting beauty in these journal entries as the seasons move across the Wisconsin scene….

Most of these country details … are of concrete observation rather than mood or symbol.

There are plenty of people to be met, and met again, in this flow of a few village years. And introduction to village neighbors will no doubt give many readers their liveliest interest in August Derleth's book—especially when the characters are odd, like the gentle old man who has taken on the tremendous task of snaring infinities in evangelistic words, or the delightful garden-lover who keeps bees and weaves rugs for sale. These people are sketched with a few lines for the most part and with a proper casualness. But the very slightness of the portraits is a token of the naturalness which gives the journal its charm and value….

In all this, again, the charm and vitality alike seem to grow from the author's absence of intention. He has had no purpose to be idyllic or grim or dramatic or even complete, but merely to set things down as they come. He is always at his best when he is most at one with his subject—when he seems to stand aside and find his neighbors amusing his readers are least likely to be amused. But happily his journal as a whole is rooted in real oneness with the life it reflects. It is thus that "Village Year" is marred by very little of the self-consciousness which can so completely spoil a country record, and at its best it glows with the real mellowness that can only come from the genuineness of effortless sympathy. A number of August Derleth's poems are set down here under the circumstances of their composition…. The rhythm of such a journal as this becomes almost inevitably monotonous; inevitably, too, its notes are of very uneven excellence; to be most thoroughly enjoyed it should be read a few pages at a time. A book of instant sensitive responsiveness, "Village Year" recreates its scene with acuteness and beauty, and makes an unusual contribution to the Americana of the present day. Its life and its landscape have yielded to change as they must, but their character has kept its persistence.