A superb tool for young dancers, full of accessible poses to mimic.
A ballet dancer presents beginning positions and discusses body awareness in this picture book designed to get readers moving.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, a young White dancer collaborated with her mother to create videos, aiming to inspire others stuck at home to start moving. In this book by Once Upon a Dance, Konora (her stage name) recounts her ballet journey, complete with beautiful photographs of her onstage performances over the years, before launching into the types of instruction she has shared on YouTube. After providing solid warmup directions that will help kids visualize the movements, Konora describes ballet’s traditional five positions as well as basic instructions for performing pliés. Then she calls for readers to create shapes with their bodies, using their imaginations to mimic animals or fashion other poses. The clear, white backgrounds put the images of Konora in stark relief, and the lighting underscores each position’s details. Pages at the beginning and end offer students other shapes to mimic, and Konora urges readers to invent their own. The small font and frequently text-dense pages may intimidate newly independent readers. But confident readers and parents can use the work as a prompt to move in new ways. Konora emphasizes that “Dance is for everyone!” and encourages awareness: “Always be gentle with your body. Don’t do anything that hurts.” With constant support and innovative descriptions that will spark imaginations, Konora invites readers to share the joy of dancing.
A superb tool for young dancers, full of accessible poses to mimic.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73598-440-7
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Once Upon A Dance
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
None
Does glasnost mean the Cold War is over? Le Carre, the ultimate chronicler of Cold War espionage, ponders that issue (and others) in an up-to-date spy fable: his drollest work thus far, his simplest plot by a long shot, and sturdy entertainment throughout—even if not in the same league with the Karla trilogy and other le Carre classics. British Intelligence has gotten hold of a manuscript smuggled out of Russia. Part of it consists of wild sociopolitical ramblings. But the other part provides full details on the USSR's most secret defense weaponry—which is apparently in utter shambles! Can the UK and US trust this data and proceed with grand-scale disarmament? To find out, the Brits recruit the left-wing London publisher Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair, who has been chosen—by the manuscript's author, a reclusive Soviet scientist nicknamed "Goethe"—to handle the book's publication in the West. Barley's mission is to rendezvous with Goethe in Russia, ask lots of questions, and evaluate whether he's for real. . .or just part of a KGB disinformation scheme. Barley—a gifted amateur jazz-sax player, a quasi-roue in late middle age—has few doubts about Goethe's sincerity; he shares, with increasing fervor, the scientist's Utopian dreams of nth-degree glasnost. But the mission is soon mired in complications: CIA interrogations (with lie-detector) of Barley; venal opposition from US defense-contractors; and Barley's intense—and dangerous—love for Goethe's friend Katya, the go-between for his USSR visits. Narrated by a Smiley-like consultant at British Intelligence, the story, unwinds in typical le Carre style (leisurely interrogations, oblique angles), but without the usual denseness. The book's more serious threads—debates on disarmament, Barley's embrace of world peace over the "chauvinist drumbeat," the love story—tend toward the obvious and the faintly preachy. Still, Barley is a grand, Dickensian creation, the ugly Americans are a richly diverting crew, and this is witty, shapely tale-spinning from a modern master.
None NonePub Date: June 9, 1989
ISBN: 0141196351
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989
A thorough, right-wing perspective on the philosophical vices of modern science.
A theoretical critique of scientism, the hyperbolically confident view that scientific materialism is capable of explaining the universe in its totality.
Christopher announces an ambitious agenda: to challenge the “scientific vision of life,” the reductive attempt to capture all existing phenomena—human and otherwise—in the categories of scientific materialism. The author principally devotes his attention to the relentless attempt to explain human behavior from the perspective of DNA, the alleged “language of life.” However, Christopher contends, with impressive clarity and rigor, that such an attempt has long been exposed as a failure—explanatory recourse to DNA simply doesn’t account for the whole spectrum of behavioral differences or variations in innate intelligence. Despite the mounting difficulties with the explanatory power of DNA, however, the scientific community has doubled down on its commitment to it—a type of “faith-based” rather than evidentiary allegiance. The author interprets this commitment as an expression of irrational scientism, which combines a “total confidence in the materialistic model of human life” with a self-congratulatory “hype and arrogance.” Christopher devotes so much attention to the field of genetics precisely because he sees it as the crucible of this scientism: “I suggest that biologists/geneticists are effectively in the front lines of the defense of materialism. That foundational scientific belief that life is completely describable in terms of physics dictates that DNA fulfill the heredity role. Never mind some of the extraordinary behavioral challenges, DNA has to cover all of materialism’s bets.”
Christopher also assesses the ways scientific dogma clouds discussions of environmental sustainability, race, intelligence, and even meditation—in the latter case he furnishes a fascinating discussion of the limitations of the analysis of Sam Harris, a philosopher and neuroscientist who is a well-known critic of religion. Further, he does a credible job of not only exposing the vulnerabilities and limitations of DNA as a theoretical panacea, but also the ways the scientific community routinely dismisses them, betraying their avowed commitment to intellectual openness. “Contradicting the certitude of science there are bunch [sic] of behavioral phenomena which are very difficult to explain from a materialist perspective. The inability of science to acknowledge this situation contradicts the regularly proclaimed openness and curiosity of scientists. In fact science has its own rigid materialist purview and strongly defends it.” The author, whose perspective is unmistakably locatable on the right of the political aisle, claims he does not supply a “nuanced effort,” and this is sometimes true. In his discussion of black communities, he offers common racist tropes: “A relatively weak commitment towards education and a tendency towards violence are still substantial problems in parts of the African American community.” Overall, the author’s argument is clear and free of technical convolution, a remarkable feat given the forbidding nature of much of the subject matter. His chief goal is to demonstrate the “sacred” nature of the scientific community’s fidelity to DNA as a settled theory and, as a consequence, encourage it to “start looking elsewhere for explanations.” At the very least, he accomplishes this goal.
A thorough, right-wing perspective on the philosophical vices of modern science.Pub Date: March 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62967-170-3
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Wise Media Group
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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