A unique book with more than a few profound philosophical moments that evoke peace and foster emotional healing.
Readers see the many faces of adult orphan grief in Garwood-Jones’ adult picture book.
The five stages of grief, as conceptualized by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, get an expansive remix, complete with renderings of subjects in the throes of various distilled moments of coping mechanism flux. In this cleverly conceived book, faithfully nuanced caricatures, or stagers (a term taken from Shakespearean theater protocol and a play on Kübler-Ross’ stages), mirror the ways grief manifests in our actions across 41 chapters with titles that are sometimes familiar (“The Shell Shocked,” “The Pity Partiers,” “The Addicted”) and other times unexpected (“The Dog Moms,” “The Closeted,” “The Narcissists”). Over a dozen stand-alone quotes on grief by noted people are interspersed between, as well. An eggplant-purple color scheme is used purposefully to unify the sweeping range of emotions between disparate poles of intensity, associated with red, and calm, associated with blue. To “capture how we are coping, moment to moment, year after year, after a big loss” is the author’s mission statement, and for the most part, it is easy to draw a connection between the coping mechanism attributed to the various stagers. In some chapters, however, the correlation between the subject as portrayed in the accompanying text and the person’s stage of grief is tenuous. A chapter entitled “The Dicks,” for instance, includes a portrait of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and two other men, all espousing questionable ideologies. They may well be orphaned adults, but their personalities can’t be boiled down to a reaction to grief. Midway through, a quote by writer and actor Amy Sedaris, “Assume everyone is grieving,” reorients readers in light of such less apparent examples of how an adult orphan might be grappling with loss. Finding oneself, family, friends, or others within these pages makes it a perfectly contemplative coping tool.
A unique book with more than a few profound philosophical moments that evoke peace and foster emotional healing.Pub Date: May 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781738267422
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Pen Jar Productions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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