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
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
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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