A wealth of attractively-packaged information for fashion-conscious girls with some money to spend.
This highly visual and very pink fashion primer dissects six “style vibes” for teen girls, pointing readers toward wardrobe essentials, celebrity inspirations and shopping destinations for looks from “boho” to “classic” to “glam.”
Each section in the guide explores a particular look, beginning with a photographic spread of “must-haves,” each labeled and annotated (e.g. “QUILTED PURSE: The perfect piece—TRENDY YET TIMELESS”). Readers are led through spreads of suggested add-ons (“Pair a drapey cardi with a FLIRTY MINI for an extra dose of femininity!”), then introduced to young women whose fashion suits the chapter. A final “look book” spread shows celebrities, runway models and women in the street who exemplify the chapter's look. After covering “girly,” “boho,” “classic,” “edgy,” “glam” and “indie,” the editors present two catch-all chapters, one guide to accessories and one to choosing jeans, swimwear, bras and underwear that hide and accentuate different body shapes. The book assumes an intermediate fashion vocabulary: The terms “ruching” and “capelet,” for example, are not defined, though illustrations offer some clues. There is, as promised, variation among the styles, but the range of acceptable looks is still fairly narrow, and many tips focus on making oneself different but not too different.
A wealth of attractively-packaged information for fashion-conscious girls with some money to spend. (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7624-4193-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
A compelling true-crime story with a can’t-lose hook.
A young Canadian man spends 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Long-haired, 19-year-old Kyle Unger had a reputation as a troublemaker. On the night of June 23, 1990, Kyle and his best friend made a last-minute decision to attend the Woodstick Music Festival in Manitoba. The teens had fun at the festival playing games, listening to bands, drinking; they didn’t head home till morning. Later that morning, the body of 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier was found in a creek, having been savagely beaten and sexually assaulted before being strangled. By the next week, Kyle was charged with her murder. Releasing him due to insufficient evidence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were still convinced Kyle was the killer. The RCMP laid a trap for Kyle called the “Mr. Big” operation, tricking him into confessing to a murder he did not commit. Convicted and sentenced to prison in 1992, Kyle spent 17 years fighting to prove his innocence until his acquittal in 2009. Brignall chronicles Kyle’s ordeal in a fast-paced, detailed narrative that relies heavily on court transcripts and features copious dialogue (not specifically sourced). Admirably, the coverage of the trial and Unger’s post-conviction legal proceedings are as absorbing as the accounts of the murder and investigation.
A compelling true-crime story with a can’t-lose hook. (photos, timeline, glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 13 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4594-0863-0
Page Count: 136
Publisher: James Lorimer
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Painstaking, judicious, and by no means exculpatory but with hints of sympathy.
A portrait of two victims of the Great Depression whose taste for guns and fast cars led to short careers in crime but longer ones as legends.
Blumenthal (Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2016, etc.) makes a determined effort to untangle a mare’s nest of conflicting eyewitness accounts, purple journalism, inaccurate police reports, and self-serving statements from relatives and cohorts of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Though the results sometimes read as dry recitations of names and indistinguishable small towns, she makes perceptive guesses about what drove them and why they have become iconic figures, along with retracing their early lives, two-year crime spree, and subsequent transformations into doomed pop-culture antiheroes. She does not romanticize the duo—giving many of their murder victims faces through individual profiles, for instance, and describing wounds in grisly detail—but does convincingly argue that their crimes and characters (particularly Bonnie’s) were occasionally exaggerated. Blumenthal also wrenchingly portrays the desperation that their displaced, impoverished families must have felt while pointedly showing how an overtaxed, brutal legal system can turn petty offenders into violent ones. A full version of Bonnie’s homespun ballad “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” and notes on the subsequent lives of significant relatives, accomplices, and lawmen join meaty lists of sources and interviews at the end.
Painstaking, judicious, and by no means exculpatory but with hints of sympathy. (photos, timeline, author’s note, source notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 12-14)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47122-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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