A bumpy read, but it conveys the power of love and will; of special interest to caregivers of children with severe...
A mother’s loving memoir about caring and advocating for her son, who was born with a severe form of cerebral palsy.
When her son Graham was born, Tresness knew there was something wrong with her baby. She was right. He ended up suffering from multiple seizures and stayed in the intensive care neonatal unit for 24 days. Tresness and her husband, Greg, learned the heartbreaking diagnosis: their son had cerebral palsy and would most likely never sit, walk unaided, or speak. Tresness describes, without complaint, the herculean task of caring for Graham—feeding him, changing his diapers, cleaning up his vomit, soothing his long bouts of crying. She relates how thrilled she was to discover craniosacral therapy, which uses therapeutic touch on the cranial joints to alleviate stress and pain, and describes how Graham, who never smiled, finally did so—at age 2—after a CST therapist worked with him. Tresness met and befriended John Upledger, the developer of CST. Intrigued by the therapy, she became a CST therapist herself. She describes how she and her husband learned about “eye gaze technology,” a computer system that allowed Graham to communicate, and the thrill when Graham used it to call the family dog. In response to their son’s success, the couple developed and founded CHAT, a program that teaches and enables nonverbal people to communicate through technology. The author also recounts how she and her husband had to hire attorneys to battle unsupportive school administrators to fight for Graham’s right to a fair education. The narrative is powerful and heartfelt, but the prose needs a thorough edit to fix incomplete sentences and mixed tenses: “It was exciting because he is in puberty, and developing muscle growth now is so important for his overall health.” Still, Tresness’ positive perspective on her life caring for and loving her disabled son resonates.
A bumpy read, but it conveys the power of love and will; of special interest to caregivers of children with severe neurological disorders.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941859-43-8
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Divine Phoenix
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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