As well-researched as it is seamlessly composed, this book entertains as it educates.
A Vanity Fair contributing editor encourages adult readers to tumble back down the rabbit hole of childhood and rediscover their favorite books.
In his first book, veteran cultural critic Handy, a former writer and editor at both Time and Spy magazines, astutely discusses the central truth about rereading children's books, which is that the experience is equal parts nostalgia and revelation. Focusing on books for pre–young adult ages, he observes that adult rereaders of beloved childhood texts cannot engage with the work without acknowledging the mature perspective that adulthood confers; thus, they will rediscover the works from a new vantage point. A book like this is difficult to write and can be even more difficult to find an audience for. To succeed, the tone must be informative but not pedantic, and Handy nails it, displaying a highly engaging prose style that showcases an impressive ebb and flow of sentence structure and delicate mix of information and entertainment. The author expertly employs his experience as an editor and writer, mingling personal anecdotes with literary history and social commentary while discussing the enduring popularity of Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon or pondering what message Shel Silverstein’s somewhat masochistic The Giving Tree is supposed to teach its young audience. Handy’s candor is one of the book’s most refreshing features, and he invites readers to puzzle through their own complicated thoughts about favorite novels right alongside him. Writing about everything from The Chronicles of Narnia to Where the Wild Things Are to The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the author demonstrates a deep love of children’s literature and a keen understanding of the ways in which reapproaching beloved texts can highlight the connections and differences between a child’s perception and adult reality.
As well-researched as it is seamlessly composed, this book entertains as it educates.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0995-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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