Intensive care units are intensive care units, whether they deal in humans or animals: they are places of extremes that play on the emotions like stringed instruments. Boston Globe writer Croke (The Modern Ark: The History of Zoos: Past, Present, and Future, 1997), with a seasoned journalist’s appreciation of pressure-cooker situations, relates here a sizable clutch of stories from the veterinary emergency room. The Foster Hospital for Small Animals at the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine is the kind of place you want at your disposal when your animal falls ill: gathered under its roof are the latest in veterinary medical technology and experts in animal internal medicine, dentistry, ophthalmology, and oncology. Croke spent a good amount of time in the Foster emergency room, talking to vets and experiencing the near constant, barely contained frenzy. It may be an African gray parrot with a prolapsed uterus, a cockatiel that sucked a seed down its windpipe, a water dragon with a ruptured ulcer, a pet guinea pig chewed on by a pet rat. Croke has a way of writing that subtly allows readers to almost hear the vets” train of thinking as they engage in high velocity medical sleuthing: why is this dog twitching? Neurological, infectious? Did he eat a moldy meatball? Suffer a head trauma? She also has the delicate touch that manages to ventilate the fury of the ER—the rapid escalation of trouble when a swollen abdomen suddenly becomes a cardiac arrest or when the emotional upheaval goes critical and flashes with palpable grief—without becoming hyperbolic. And this is a cautionary tale. Such care comes with a price, sometimes a real high price, like $4,000 for a ventilator, and pet health insurance is no longer a joke. A breath-baiting glimpse of animals in medical peril and the very beautiful emergency room choreography of those who attend to them.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-94507-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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