Under the aegis of the late Jim Henson, here are nine stories that first appeared as The Storyteller TV series—traditional folk and fairy tales refreshed for a modern audience. Released now as an adult book, this appealing, abundantly illustrated offering is just as suitable for young readers. Minghella looks to a Tuscan proverb (``The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it'') for inspiration and, like Italo Calvino in Italian Folktales, adds to and alters the stories, most already available in standard collections—``Hans My Hedgehog'' and ``The Luck Child,'' for example. Some of his variations lack resonance on paper (the troll in ``The True Bride'' speaks in scrambled phrases like ``I'm founded dumb'') and distract from the prime-time themes of fear, trust, fidelity, etc. Most, however, are interesting even when they deviate from the classic story line (Hans has soft bristles and a devoted mother) and often enough Minghella's own language sets the tone: ``in a week with two Fridays,'' he writes, or ``Suddenly everyone could live forever'' or ``Beggars are never what they seem.'' Darcy May's 41 full-color paintings, rendered in a subtle palette, are elegant, expressive compositions faithful to the spirit of the stories and kin to several old favorites. Image for image, they don't quite match the spiritual quality and inner flow of, say, Nonny Hogrogian's (juvenile) The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs, and they lack the penetrating aspect of the (much longer) Segal/Sendak collaboration The Juniper Tree. Good company to these and others already on library shelves, they have a soft, distinctive look that should draw in readers of all ages.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-58256-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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