Not as liberating as it wants to be.
A classic, blacked-out and illustrated.
In perhaps—if possible—a greater disservice to this classic fairy tale than the 1989 Disney film, poet and self-described erasurist Farkas “rescues” “The Little Mermaid,” turning what she describes as a tale of a “prince-obsessed fish [who] was willing to give away her…most precious gift, just to land a boy” into a “better, stronger (and yes, feminist) story.” She accomplishes this by blacking out all the nuance along the way. Make no mistake, blackout is a subversive and powerful use of destruction as creation. As an introduction to the concept of blackout poetry, the book serves its purpose—offering up the original text reprinted in full and bound back to back with the poem not as a point of comparison, but as sacrifice for budding young blackout poets. Yet the lack of appreciation for the depth of the original text, of which the tragedy and beauty of destruction is such a core theme, is what makes this unbearably ironic. With her marker liberally applied to Andersen’s prose, Farkas produces gems like “she didn’t want her fins and tail,” and “the sweet witch… / ...beckoned her to see where she belongs. / princess of fishes, of course a boy could never change her.” The project is buoyed only by Triplett’s whimsical illustrations of marine life, a pink-haired White mermaid, and emotive, abstract currents of color rendered in what looks like paint pen.
Not as liberating as it wants to be. (author's note) (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951836-07-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.
Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”
J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780316582681
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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