A straightforward and positive portrayal of a young singing sensation.
This biography of the teen singer/songwriter shows a talented young woman in charge of her art and career.
Touted as the first artist born in this century to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Eilish is presented here as someone who knows what she wants, is full of creativity, and is an an embodiment of Gen Z proclivities. Beginning with her early childhood in a Los Angeles neighborhood (described here as being improved by gentrification) where she was home-schooled with Finneas, her brother and fellow musician, and moving on to the overnight sensation of her first song, this book covers the period up to the many awards she received at the 2020 Grammys. Exploring the writing and recording process of each hit song and video, it can serve as an empowering book for teens, who will see how Eilish kept control of her work and her life. While, due to her youth, others continually tried to take over her career, she is portrayed as being unapologetic about being a teenager with valid experience and perspectives. There is a chapter on Finneas’ own musical successes, and breakout text goes into specific aspects of her life, such as her veganism, Tourette syndrome, synesthesia, and her relationships with other pop stars, making some of this information feel isolated rather than integrated into the overall portrait of the artist.
A straightforward and positive portrayal of a young singing sensation. (picture credits, index) (Biography. 12-18)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72842-417-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A brief but impressively insightful and engaging overview of the life and assassination of Malcolm X.
A vivid chronicle of Malcolm X’s life and untimely death.
Few people were shocked when Malcolm X was gunned down by assassins in 1965. The 39-year-old former Nation of Islam member and civil rights leader was a lightning rod for controversy. The first half of Doeden’s biography explains how Malcolm Little’s distrust of white America was sown in his youth, how his imprisonment as a young man led to a path of self-education and spiritual seeking, and how the Nation of Islam provided him with an outlet for his resentment. A gifted, charismatic speaker, he rose to prominence as a civil rights leader who championed Black Power and offered an alternative to people dissatisfied with Martin Luther King’s approach of nonviolent resistance. Malcolm’s pilgrimage to Mecca prompted in him a major philosophical shift that resulted in public feuding with the Nation of Islam and its leaders. Doeden thoroughly explores in the second half of the book the circumstances of Malcolm’s assassination, the trial and conviction of the killers, and the rumors of conspiracies and coverups that persist.
A brief but impressively insightful and engaging overview of the life and assassination of Malcolm X. (photographs, timeline, glossary, source notes, suggestions for further reading) (Biography. 12-18)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7613-5484-0
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study.
On the verge of her 80th birthday (Feb. 18, 2013), Ono steps out of her iconic late husband’s shadow for a sympathetic profile.
The authors present her as a groundbreaking creative artist whose work has been misunderstood, not to say derided, for decades and who was unjustly vilified as the woman who broke up the Beatles. They describe a comfortable upbringing in Japan and the United States, childhood experiences in World War II and artistic development as part of New York’s avant-garde scene in the 1950s and early ’60s. The book goes on to chronicle her relationships with various husbands, including “soul mate” John Lennon, and her two children, life as a peace-activist celebrity in the ’70s, and (in much less detail) her activities, honors and exhibitions after Lennon’s death. The account is occasionally trite (“Yoko and John were stressed to the max”) or platitudinous, and it’s unlikely to persuade younger (or any) readers to appreciate Yoko’s creations—which run to works like an 80-minute film of naked rumps walking by and sets of chess pieces that are all the same color—as great art. Nevertheless, it does impart a good sense of conceptual and performance art’s purposes and expressions along with a detailed portrait of a complex woman who for several reasons has a significant place in our cultural history.
Even rabid fans of Lennon or the 1960s will find new information and angles in this searching study. (photos, timeline to 2009, resource lists) (Biography. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0444-4
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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