The girl next door tells all. And guess what? She doesn't have a shred of dirt on anyone, including Walt Disney, Dick Clark, Fabian, Paul Anka, or even Cubbie. What else would one expect from Annette Funicello but an overly nostalgic portrait of the decade that gave rise to Disneyland, TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club, rock 'n' roll, and teen idols? The happy story of Annette's youth in Los Angeles, Disney's discovery of her, her emergence as the biggest Mouseketeer of all, her subsequent television, movie, and recording careers, her two marriages (the second blissful, the first not that bad), her lovely children, and her heroic fight against multiple sclerosis are enough to keep anyone away from the sugar bowl for life. At the same time, Funicello's honesty and sincerity keep the whole thing from seeming untrue, no matter how much some sections beg for her to show Walt Disney in a single crabby moment, Dick Clark flying off the handle at the Drifters, or Fabian being all hands on a date with her. And she leaves to the imagination what proposed movie storylines like ``Annette the Doper, Annette the Hooker, Annette the Drunk'' might have been like. Other than her struggle with MS, though, the worst moment is Paul Anka saying something unkind to her on the telephone. But Annette (with Romanowski, who co-authored Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme) manages to avoid being precious. In fact, her account of being among the first visitors to Disneyland and a barrage of information about performing with people like Frankie Avalon make for some quite illuminating sections. And she even admits to smoking and a little drinking. By the end, Funicello is able to look back without taking any of it, especially albums like Italianette and Hawaiianette, too seriously. (Doubleday Book Club selection)
Pub Date: May 3, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6020-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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