by Angela Sette ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 2019
A mother and her children gain wisdom from a family health crisis.
A mother struggles to find a cure for her daughter’s unusual seizures—and the whole family benefits—in a debut memoir.
In third grade, Sette’s only daughter began to slip backward in her development, regressing in reading and communicating and losing the ability to buckle her seat belt. Diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy known as electro-status epilepticus sleep syndrome, or Landau-Kleffner syndrome, Nicolette had nighttime seizures that impaired her sleep, and the available medications didn’t work well for her. In this book, Sette describes her panicked odyssey into alternative treatments for her daughter, which over time helped her understand how the brain and the rest of the body work together. Nicolette finally began to improve when doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia allowed her to enroll in its ketogenic diet program. And after seeing the improvement in her daughter, Sette began to make healthy changes in her life, too, looking into neurofeedback, meditation, mindfulness, mantras, brain training games, and more. As a result, she and her daughter and sons, Zachary and Anthony, learned enduring lessons about the connections between the brain and body—involving diet, exercise, sleep, self-knowledge, and self-expression—that Sette describes in this book. Though Nicolette’s health problems are often the focus of the story, the author and her sons also stepped outside their comfort zones, as Zachary began a demanding pre-med program at Pennsylvania State University, Anthony had “terrible headaches” after a concussion, and both sons had to learn to help their sister. Sette’s suggestions are largely practical—though often New Age–y—and focused on basics such as healthy eating and finding a balance in life that allows for creativity, play, and humor. Along the way, the author found inspiration in sources ranging from Oprah Winfrey to Albert Einstein and from Rhonda Byrne’s self-help book The Secret (2006) to Norwegian physiology professor Ulrik Wisløff. But she distills what she learned into a simple message for anyone hoping to feel physically and mentally better: “To sum up, take inventory and start with small overall steps toward health; that will make it easier.”
A mother and her children gain wisdom from a family health crisis. (reader's guide, bibliography, author bio)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982230-51-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
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
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