A largely amusing, if occasionally dark, series starter for cat lovers.
A feline star is born into a social media dynasty in Pattison’s kids’ chapter book.
Cats, using amazing translation technology, have taken control of KittyTube and can now share and monetize their own video content. In an homage to the golden age of Hollywood studios, Kittywood is run by five major kennels, which engineer lucrative sponsorship deals with cat-food brands. Angel, a white Persian kitten, must quickly learn to adapt to the ups and downs of internet stardom. The road to a viral breakout, however, isn’t an easy one. As the daughter of two KittyTube stars, she must master the tricky skills of posing, acting, and grooming, all while forging political alliances with rival felines—especially her nemesis, Jazz, a Siamese cat who’s consistently ranked Top Kitten week after week. In a Black Mirror–meets–LOLCats plot twist, Angel has to become Top Kitten in order to secure funds to help her estranged father, who’s stranded in France after his starring role in a film titled Puss and Boots fell through. Her mother, MamaGrace, is unable to work after a car accident left her partially blind and scarred—a possible nod to Cats’ Grizabella. Over the course of the book, cameras loom ominously over the kittens’ lives. Some video sequences can be downright sad, as when Angel looks into the camera and meows: “It was my most woebegone meow. It was a cry for my mama. It was a cry for someone to come and pick me up and pet me.” Mostly, however, Pattison’s characters delight, as when Angel compliments fellow kitten PittyPat, who adores water: “There’s an art to looking charming when your fur is all wet.” Ultimately, the underlying message is that one’s self-worth should never get tangled up in the number of views one gets. Standard’s bubbly, black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations appear throughout, lending even more charm to an already whimsical story. Standard’s enthusiasm for animals is clear; one only wishes there were more of her drawings here.
A largely amusing, if occasionally dark, series starter for cat lovers.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62944-142-9
Page Count: 122
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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