A well-meaning book that loses its folkloric appeal in its obvious messages.
In Reid’s (The Student Councilor, 2010, etc.) children’s picture book and simple parenting guide, the impending birth of a fatherless child sparks lessons in positivity and spiritual healing.
This book, set in an imagined island village and illustrated in a saturated watercolor palette, is dedicated “To All the Single Parents for Their Strength and Courage.” The author delivers her messages of reinforcement in the style of a multicultural folk tale. The sun, she explains in her introduction, symbolizes an absent parent, who “for one reason or another,” plays no part in the life of the child. The story begins when the sun vanishes before the birth of a little girl named Arina. The unhappy, anxious mother seeks out a magician, who helps her understand that love hasn’t “disappeared with the sun” and informs her that the light of love is found in thoughts of happiness and gratitude. After Arina bathes in her mother’s newfound positive energy, her birth results in so much light and love that people come from all over the world to witness the miracle. From here, however, the story’s folk-tale charm gives way to a prosaic tone. In a kind but firm, teacherly fashion, the book becomes frankly instructive—so much so that when the now older Arina has a tantrum, her mother gives her a timeout and counsels her to “Never be mean or say negative things about anyone,” to focus on the positive, never judge others, be thankful, and to let her inner light shine on “forever.” This works for Arina, but real children may feel somewhat burdened by such a weighty panoply of expectations. That said, Lemaire’s (The Adventure of Maesee Peek, 2016, etc.) pleasant, page-filling illustrations maintain the book’s visual continuity, interspersed with blocks of text set against vibrantly colored backgrounds.
A well-meaning book that loses its folkloric appeal in its obvious messages.Pub Date: May 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5086-1270-4
Page Count: 42
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.
A former NFL player casts his gimlet eye on American race relations.
In his first book, Acho, an analyst for Fox Sports who grew up in Dallas as the son of Nigerian immigrants, addresses White readers who have sent him questions about Black history and culture. “My childhood,” he writes, “was one big study abroad in white culture—followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL, which I spent on teams with 80-90 percent black players, each of whom had his own experience of being a person of color in America. Now, I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.” While the author avoids condescending to readers who already acknowledge their White privilege or understand why it’s unacceptable to use the N-word, he’s also attuned to the sensitive nature of the topic. As such, he has created “a place where questions you may have been afraid to ask get answered.” Acho has a deft touch and a historian’s knack for marshaling facts. He packs a lot into his concise narrative, from an incisive historical breakdown of American racial unrest and violence to the ways of cultural appropriation: Your friend respecting and appreciating Black arts and culture? OK. Kim Kardashian showing off her braids and attributing her sense of style to Bo Derek? Not so much. Within larger chapters, the text, which originated with the author’s online video series with the same title, is neatly organized under helpful headings: “Let’s rewind,” “Let’s get uncomfortable,” “Talk it, walk it.” Acho can be funny, but that’s not his goal—nor is he pedaling gotcha zingers or pleas for headlines. The author delivers exactly what he promises in the title, tackling difficult topics with the depth of an engaged cultural thinker and the style of an experienced wordsmith. Throughout, Acho is a friendly guide, seeking to sow understanding even if it means risking just a little discord.
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-80046-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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