Removed from perfect indeed, but all the more charming for it.
YA author Hoose (The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, 2004, etc.) recalls his youthful obsession with baseball and the profound impact of his casual friendship with a famous cousin who played for the Yankees.
Growing up in 1950s Indianapolis, the author loved nothing more than baseball. With the help of indulgent parents who subscribed to nearly every magazine about the sport, he quickly became the neighborhood expert, even fielding phone calls from his barber to settle arguments. Despite his voluminous knowledge, Hoose was dismayed by his lack of prowess on the field, where he was often the last one chosen. Just as he seemingly reached his pre-adolescent nadir, his father mentioned that he was related to none other than Don Larsen, a pitcher for the New York Yankees. The boy wrote to his second cousin about his struggles and received an encouraging note in return, setting in motion a long-distance relationship that would have a significant effect on Hoose’s life (though Larsen would only vaguely remember the details years later). Once word spread about his famous relation, he quickly became something of a local celebrity, especially after Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, in 1956. Though it took place during school hours, Hoose managed to see a few innings thanks to a comically frantic arrangement with his mother, who rode his bike to school at lunchtime so that he could pedal it back home, eat while watching the game, then race back to school just in time for class. These idyllic remembrances perpetuate the pervading cliché that sport was a better, purer pursuit in the past. Hoose’s genuine passion for the game shines through, however, and the self-effacing descriptions of his boyhood troubles make you want to root, root, root for the kid with the big glasses and the wild arm.
Removed from perfect indeed, but all the more charming for it.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-8027-1537-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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