A fine work that should keep young readers engaged with fun and amusing subjects while providing a foundation for thoughtful...
A debut collection of rhyming stories centers on the lives of children in an effort to both entertain and educate.
Cooper’s series of “quirky tales” relayed in this work range from dentures that talk by themselves to soap suds that cause a school’s cancellation and a list of overly strict recess rules. The protagonists are generally children or their parents, grandparents, or teachers, and the stories frequently resolve in a whimsical fashion. At the end of each poem there is a question for young readers and adults to reflect on and consider. There is a list of general questions at the end about the book as a whole as well as more in-depth questions for each story. The text is punctuated by black-and-white stock photographs, mostly of diverse children enacting the various events of each tale. There are intentional incidents of a poem’s rhyme scheme or meter changing in an effort to allow readers to identify switches in style. But this occasionally makes the work feel uneven. For example, on the very first page, the line “As the water came near, he showed no fear” is stuck between two sets of rhyming pairs, adding an extra line to the established number per stanza and throwing the verse off-balance. But the author, who is a retired school system reading supervisor, provides lively subject matter that should appeal to early readers, allowing for an enjoyable learning activity to be undertaken with adult supervision. The questions at the end of each poem and at the book’s conclusion are insightful, and they encourage youngsters to read deeper than they might have without guidance. This volume is equally valuable as a tool for teachers in presenting their lessons or for parents in helping to boost their children’s reading comprehension.
A fine work that should keep young readers engaged with fun and amusing subjects while providing a foundation for thoughtful reading practices.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4808-4762-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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