A short and cheerful introduction to staying positive.
This debut illustrated children’s book explains the benefits of positivity and optimism through two friends with opposite temperaments.
Although Charlie and Marley are close friends, they have very different ways of seeing the world. Charlie, a brunette with light brown skin and dark hair, always anticipates the worst, and is usually frowning. Marley, a lighter-skinned redhead, always expects great things to happen, and has a perpetual smile. Charlie starts her day in a bad mood, grumbling about how she hates everything. Marley wakes up cheerful, looking forward to a wonderful day. Not only that, the things they predict come true. Charlie is certain of a bad breakfast, and “sure enough, Charlie got just what she believed. The cereal was gone and the milk was gone.” Meanwhile, Marley knows “without a doubt” her favorite cereal and nice cold milk with be ready, and she’s absolutely right. The day goes on in the same pattern, and other children avoid grumpy Charlie. Finally, Charlie decides to ask her friend about her secret to happiness. Marley explains that you can choose to be grateful and content, and when Charlie tries it, she finds her new positivity turns her life around. Discussion questions and a word-search puzzle are included. In her book, Sardella spreads the message of positivity culture, which assures that optimism will manifest good results in a virtuous cycle, just as Marley’s cheerfulness guarantees her cereal and milk will be available. Positive thinking has many adherents, with a body of literature to support the idea that optimism can improve well-being, so parents who agree with this view and wish their children to adopt it may find this work a useful primer. But positivity also has its critics, who argue that it can, for example, suppress full expression of feelings and lead to magical thinking and kids blaming other people for their problems; parents will need to decide where they fall on this issue. The digital images by debut illustrator Torres have a bright, cartoonlike, appealing style that captures the girls’ personalities with effective details like Charlie’s unhappy-looking teddy bear.
A short and cheerful introduction to staying positive.Pub Date: May 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73259-410-4
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Char Mar Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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