A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.
The struggle to save the charismatic wild horses of the American West animates this lavishly illustrated book that explores freedom and captivity.
Walker, a photographer, recounts her experiences with Blue Zeus, a wild stallion named for the exquisite color of his blue-gray coat. He also sports four knee-high white socks; a magnificently shaggy, wind-tossed mane; and a shock of hair that flops over his face to veil his brooding black eyes. The author, who judges him “the most beautiful stallion” she has ever seen, spent several seasons photographing Blue Zeus and his family of pinto mares and their yearlings and foals as they roamed the Red Desert Complex region of Wyoming. Her work is in part a pictorial essay on horse life. Her subjects graze, nuzzle, loll, and survey their grassy domain. Their idyll ended in 2020 when the Bureau of Land Management rounded up thousands of wild horses to clear range land for cattle. Thanks to his habit of leading his family out of approved Herd Management Areas, Blue Zeus was targeted for capture with no release. Later sections of the book relate Walker’s efforts to find Blue Zeus and his mares somewhere in the archipelago of BLM pens and arrange their adoptions by a horse sanctuary before they got sent to the slaughterhouse. The author’s homage renders the society of wild horses in vivid, evocative prose. (“Blue Zeus walked a little bit away from his family…and tried to nap in peace. First, little Fire got too close and Blue Zeus chased him away with ears pinned. Then Nike came over and he pinned his ears at her, but she was undeterred. Slowly the whole family came over, getting as close to him as possible.”) Walker’s pastorals are balanced by a gripping, intensely emotional cri de coeur against BLM roundups. (“It is a horrible feeling of helplessness: wanting to scream, throw up, as I see a horse go down or riders roping a foal and dragging it in.”) The color photographs are vibrant and glowing, posing the animals nobly against wide skies and distant mountains and conveying their fearful kineticism as they fled BLM helicopters. Wild-horse lovers will be fixated by the author’s arresting visuals and her dramatic story of equine pathos.
A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-35094-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Living Images by Carol Walker, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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