Two engaging metaphorical stories, shot through with history and suspense.
A young Jewish boy in America confronts fear and tragedy during World War II in this dreamlike debut.
Karp calls this debut a memoir. The core events, he writes, are true, “seen from the interior of a young boy’s mind and flashed back through the dark lens of an old man’s remembrances.” The two stories center on Joseph, a Jewish boy in the 1940s who is haunted by macabre visions of a Nazi invasion of America. Each story effectively draws parallels between the ongoing war and the nightmarish situations Joseph endures in school and with his friends. In “Stones,” it’s 1940, and the nearly 8-year-old Joseph is the only Jewish boy in his upstate New York school. He’s perpetually late to class because of sleep problems. His teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, keeps the whole class after school due to Joseph’s tardiness, which incites the students to torment him; she’s pleased when her “loyal student attack dogs” stone the boy. In Joseph’s imagination, Mrs. Cunningham is Adolf Hitler, and he equates her punishment of the class to the Nazis’ punishing an entire village because of one resistance fighter. As nations declare war on each other, Joseph’s schoolmates do the same to him, the lone Jew. In the second story, “Drowning,” Joseph is 10 years old. A rabbi and his two sons, Danny and Shlomo, rent space at his family’s farm, termed “the Yid Farm” by local non-Jews. On the hottest day of summer, Joseph, Danny and Shlomo walk to the lake only to find it is closed because of wartime activities. The locked gate provides yet another reminder to Joseph that he is unwelcome wherever he goes. The boys break in, however, and meet up with a fourth boy, Raymond, a gentile. Tragedy strikes when Raymond convinces Joseph and Danny to take a leaky rowboat out on the water. When Raymond’s father, a police officer, gets involved, it spins the story into a metaphor for Jewish disadvantages during the Nazi regime. Afterward, Joseph turns to a devout Christian, Gaptooth Thomas, the family’s handyman, for solace; he’s Joseph’s spiritual teacher, always ready with a parable. Both adults and young readers will likely appreciate these stories, although they may appeal most to those who lived through the war and found air-raid drills and war-bond drives replacing playground romps.
Two engaging metaphorical stories, shot through with history and suspense.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477123379
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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