Compiled by Richard Aston ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An immersive collection of student writing and a fascinating recollection by an experienced teacher.
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Aston, a social studies teacher, shares essays written by his eighth-grade students, who were encouraged to express themselves freely in writing.
In 1969, the author was offered an opportunity to refashion the social studies curriculum for eighth-graders at the Martin Luther King School in Sausalito, California. Apparently impressed by his recommendations (and hamstrung by a slew of resignations), the school offered him a job teaching, and he accepted it. MLK was one of the first schools in the nation to desegregate racially, and as a result it welcomed a diverse mix of students: not only in terms of race, but also socioeconomic status and academic achievement. In each class, there were a few students who were all but illiterate and some who were impressively precocious. The classroom environment was astonishingly chaotic, and Aston struggled to command his students’ attention. Despite his attempts to woo them with exciting material, they were chronically disinterested. Finally, the embattled teacher decided to refocus his pedagogical energies on writing and gave the students complete freedom to express themselves, a liberty that finally seemed to engage them emotionally. “When the students at Martin Luther King realized that their writing would not be graded, or criticized, and would remain anonymous, they began to express their inner thoughts, needs, and aspirations, which, I believe, helped their emotional growth,” the author writes. The bulk of Aston’s enchanting remembrance is made up of reproductions of many of these essays, which provide a bracingly unique look into the minds of adolescents during a tumultuous time in American history.
The students reflected on an expansive range of serious subjects like race and war, but they also articulated their feelings on virtually every aspect of their lives, including their frustrations with school and, in particular, Aston’s teaching. As one student put it: “He has allowed us extreme freedom this year, perhaps too much freedom. I’m afraid I’ve learned only a pinch of Social Studies and I’m sure in the whole year I could have learned more.” Aston’s commentary on his 20 years as a teacher is refreshingly forthcoming and edifying—he often taught the most challenged students, those labeled “Emotionally Disabled”; these were children raised in households that were, “to put it mildly, not conducive to learning.” He writes both astutely and movingly about the scourge of illiteracy in the United States, an embarrassment for such an affluent nation. But the true draw of this remarkable work is the writing of his students, which ranges from the surprisingly insightful to the charmingly absurd. In either case, the reader is treated to an unalloyed glimpse into the students’ psyches, which often, as the author observes, contrast a remarkable optimism with a forlorn negativity: “My name is Xathier X. Zeus. I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe a dope peddler or a secret agent or a billionaire. I might settle for a multi-millionaire.” This is an absorbing memoir, one that offers a singular historical perspective.
An immersive collection of student writing and a fascinating recollection by an experienced teacher.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 285
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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by Jenny Slate ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 2024
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.
An actor and comedian tells the story of her journey from being an unpaired “animal” to a “new mammal mother” in love.
After Slate completed her first book, “the issue of finding a partner…never rested and never allowed rest for [her] either.” Senses heightened, she had stepped into her most animal self and was on a quest to “fulfill [her] mammal instincts.” Loneliness and emotional vulnerability made her seek connection with neighborhood dogs and insights from books that promised to bring soulmates. When love did finally find her, the anxiety that he would reject her for being herself and “drinking tequila on a Saturday afternoon…then [having] a bath with my friend” was intense. After the pair became a couple and Slate became pregnant with the baby she called “the lifeform,” her neuroses—which the author mocks through an imaginary session with a psychologist—went into overdrive. Yet even as she wrestled with her fears, Slate also discovered that the body that was so often a “bay of doubt” was also becoming a “harbor of well-being” for the life-form to which she was attached. Then, during a time of “plague and disruption,” the author “exploded [her] vagina” to give birth, becoming not only a mother, but a “mammal with a soul that [was] born anew every day.” Though still haunted by a “purple-dark hole marking me in the afternoons,” Slate had become secure enough in the “nest” she had built for herself to see the hole more as a “bluish egg-thing” portending possibility. At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate’s book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life.
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780316263931
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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by Dean Fleischer-Camp ; Jenny Slate ; illustrated by Dean Fleischer-Camp ; Amy Lind
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by Jenny Slate Dean Fleischer-Camp & illustrated by Amy Lind
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