A continuation of the story begun in Yang's unique chronicle of her father's boyhood in China during the 1930s and '40s, Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father's Shoulders (1994). In this volume, now a strong-willed 17-year-old, Baba leaves the family home in Manchuria in search of a new life. WW II has recently ended, and the nation is in turmoil. Trusting neither the Communists nor the Nationalists, he makes his way warily through a tumultuous countryside. He watches as the Communists open fire on a group of students and witnesses paranoid eruptions of violence in the villages. Yet he also encounters kindness and is sheltered early on in a monastery where an old abbott tries to teach him detachment: ``If one . . . sees the world of appearances as transitory, one will transcend the pain, the pain of restless longing and discontent; only then will one be released from the endless cycles of suffering.'' But Baba wants to experience the world, and eventually he ends up in Taiwan teaching Mandarin and hygiene to an unpolished, isolated tribe distinguished by their tattooed faces. Shortly afterward he meets his wife-to-be. It isn't the stylistic merit of Yang's prose (which sometimes has a clichÇd, stilted sound) that makes her books so appealing, but rather the sense of an odyssey undertaken and of wonderful things revealed. Baba's fascination with life, his desire to learn, sustain him in the face of violence and treachery. The 20 colorful, elegiac paintings by Yang that accompany the text, populated by bald smiling baby heads and animals, convey the same sense of imminent magic and of fluid, changeable life. Yang's work has the feel of oral history and folk narrative commingled and begs to be read aloud. A talented, highly original blend of vivid family history and art. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100175-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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