An entertaining, brilliantly shot look at a Texas high school tradition.
Schultz explores the culture of Texas homecoming mums in this debut book of photography and reportage.
Across the country, high school girls often wear chrysanthemum corsages to their yearly homecoming football games. In Texas, however—where everything is bigger—the homecoming mum has morphed into an elaborated affair featuring as many as twenty artificial mums personalized with ribbons, beads, feathers, trinkets, messages, and the like. Schultz, who attended high school in Florida, first encountered the phenomenon of Texas homecoming mums after moving to the Lone Star State as an adult. She was immediately fascinated: “Is a mum just a mum or is a mum a metaphor?” she wonders early in the book. “Is the thing greater than the sum of its parts, much like the person who wears it, or the state in which it thrives, or the society in which it stands?” With this book, Schultz sets out to explore—through stories and photographs—the culture of mums: how the tradition originated, how it has changed over the years, and what it means for the schools, students, parents, and communities who participate. It’s a tale rooted in a particularly Texan love of maximalism, but one that also tells a larger story of the human need for ritual and pageantry. Schultz’s spirited prose vividly captures the colors and textures of the mums and their wearers, as when the author gets to try one on and strut around: “When you’re enveloped in a mum of this size, there’s no direction to go but forward. As I found my footing to steer all three of my dimensions, the mum audibly cheered me on, because woven into it was a waterfall of sleigh bells and cowbells. With my every step, twist, and gesture, the bells involuntarily created a manic and discordant melody.” The many eye-catching black-and-white photographs are as instrumental as the text in communicating the soul of mum culture. Both seasoned Texas home-comers and readers completely unfamiliar with the tradition will be equally charmed by this beguiling quirk of Americana.
An entertaining, brilliantly shot look at a Texas high school tradition.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781639885657
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Infectiously enthusiastic appraisals of NBA and WNBA stars.
Revering roundball royalty.
Fervor fuels this impressionistic celebration of basketball’s greatest performers. Serrano, the author of bestsellers about sports and pop culture, sticks with what’s made him successful, peppering this collection of essays about LeBron James, A’ja Wilson, and others with go-for-broke adjectives and references to rappers and action movies. You might not agree that Kobe Bryant’s final game was “monumental” or that the Golden State Warriors’ record 73 wins was a “godly” achievement, but Serrano is irresistibly passionate, a fan-writer who greets each game as a chance to be awed. Its title notwithstanding, this effervescent book isn’t about player contracts or billion-dollar revenue streams. To the author, “expensive” is synonymous with virtuosity. Ray Allen’s textbook jump shot was expensive. Though Serrano quotes William Carlos Williams in a chapter about WNBA all-timer Sue Bird, he’s more apt to cite blockbuster films, prestige TV, and hip-hop. Often, this works nicely. His inspired paean to Giannis Antetokounmpo is probably the first time that a streaky free-throw shooter has been likened to “cool-as-fuck” Helen Mirren’s unlikely appearance in The Fate of the Furious. Conversely, Serrano’s long list of memorable rap lyrics adds little to his Stephen Curry chapter. The author is appealingly self-effacing—a footnote calls attention to his “dorkiest” sentence—and watchful for manifestations of unbridled athletic joy, like the gleeful “little jump-skip thing” Dwyane Wade did after tossing an alley-oop pass. His support of the WNBA is just as strong as his love of the men’s game. DeWanna Bonner, Brittney Griner, and Diana Taurasi “are sledgehammers covered in scorpions.” Wilson “is a goddamn basketball obliteration monster.” Serrano is great at exploring how fans’ memories of their favorite players intermingle with important events from their lives. That’s the subject of his affable chapter about former San Antonio Spur Tim Duncan.
Infectiously enthusiastic appraisals of NBA and WNBA stars.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781538755228
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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