C is for cheeky and clever; a work that all ages can enjoy.
A debut alphabet book collects photographs of things that haven’t survived the perils of the road.
Though roadkill will likely make most readers cringe, the majority of what appears in this tongue-in-check volume are nontraditional victims. For example, A is for Arm, which is merely the limb from a baby doll lying atop the ground. Similarly, both the Bear and the Lion are of the plush variety. McPherson often tinkers with the notion of roadkill, which isn’t always on or near a street. A broken Tree planter sits among vehicles in a parking lot; a Fly seems to be the victim of a license plate; and a train has apparently left a car in ruins (in this case, X is for railroad crossing). This playfulness carries over to the ABCs as well: Both Coyote and Knight (a plastic toy) are listed under their phonetic spellings (K is for \ki-’o-te\; N is for \’nit\). While the photos occasionally show animals (including the coyote), there is no sign of viscera and hardly any blood. The creatures, like so many things in the book, simply look forlorn. A largely intact and lonely Jack-o’-lantern, for instance, rests in a vacant field; a seemingly empty modular Home has fallen by the side of a road; and a solitary Glove is stuck on a fence. The photos throughout are bright, sharp, and filled with details. (The railroad-crossing shot is by Miille; the rest are by McPherson.) One of the standouts is a Mattress that’s torn with its springs exposed, as if a driver dumped it without even slowing down. But there’s much more to the photo: The Mattress is next to pieces of trash and on a mostly desolate stretch of road save for the ambulance that’s clearly passed it by. In other striking pictures, road signs unfortunately haven’t been very helpful, from the railroad crossing to the stop-ahead one that offered no assistance to what’s now lying in the street.
C is for cheeky and clever; a work that all ages can enjoy.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984553-21-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
