A charmingly peculiar collection of eccentric cogitations.
Schaberg and Yakich offer an assemblage of brief meditations on just about everything, especially in relation to children, in this nonfiction collection.
The authors like to meander philosophically, but not without some sense of structure; their collection of 108 very short ruminations (most less than a page in length and some only a single sentence) are presented in alphabetical order. The subjects selected are starkly heterogeneous—they dwell on such thoroughly quotidian topics as vegetables, pajamas, and diapers, as well as grander ones like self-actualization, wisdom, and death. The pithy reflections are largely tied to the theme of children; more specifically, Schaberg and Yakich focus on the issue of raising children in a “world of screens,” in which “Big Data” seems ubiquitous and even despotic and the concept of eternity has been usurped by “only endless blips and drips, a stream of little data flowing.” This quietly gripping book is filled with peculiar data of its own: “One third of the world still builds a fire to cook dinner.” Often, the preoccupation with children and the obsession with esoteric data are whimsically combined: “You know what would be really bad? If someone fell down a hundred stairs. And they were cement… Fact is, 12,000 people die each year at the bottom of the stairs.” Beneath the gamesome whimsy lurks a deadly serious concern—per the book, some believe that the generation raised on screens is already in the premature throes of “digital dementia.” A book of this kind isn’t easy to pull off, since readers can quickly become exhausted by a series of shapeless, peripatetic musings. But there’s a definite shape to this collection, granted by the love and wonder inspired by one’s children; such love is not fully comprehensible as data, big or little. This is a delightful book, one as quirkily insightful as it is entertaining.
A charmingly peculiar collection of eccentric cogitations.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781737816423
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Red Flag Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
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
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.
An actor and comedian tells the story of her journey from being an unpaired “animal” to a “new mammal mother” in love.
After Slate completed her first book, “the issue of finding a partner…never rested and never allowed rest for [her] either.” Senses heightened, she had stepped into her most animal self and was on a quest to “fulfill [her] mammal instincts.” Loneliness and emotional vulnerability made her seek connection with neighborhood dogs and insights from books that promised to bring soulmates. When love did finally find her, the anxiety that he would reject her for being herself and “drinking tequila on a Saturday afternoon…then [having] a bath with my friend” was intense. After the pair became a couple and Slate became pregnant with the baby she called “the lifeform,” her neuroses—which the author mocks through an imaginary session with a psychologist—went into overdrive. Yet even as she wrestled with her fears, Slate also discovered that the body that was so often a “bay of doubt” was also becoming a “harbor of well-being” for the life-form to which she was attached. Then, during a time of “plague and disruption,” the author “exploded [her] vagina” to give birth, becoming not only a mother, but a “mammal with a soul that [was] born anew every day.” Though still haunted by a “purple-dark hole marking me in the afternoons,” Slate had become secure enough in the “nest” she had built for herself to see the hole more as a “bluish egg-thing” portending possibility. At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate’s book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life.
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780316263931
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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