by Basil Johnston ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2001
Not a happy ending, but nonetheless a lively and appealing memoir.
The author looks back on the history of his family, members of an Ojibway tribe driven out of Wisconsin in the 1850s to settle on an Ontario reserve.
Except for a lesser tendency to commit wholesale massacres, Canada’s treatment of indigenous people was no more enlightened than that of the US. Until very recently, both governments worked hard to wipe out the tribes’ languages and cultures. Ojibway ethnologist and writer Johnston (The Manitous, 1995, etc.) realizes the motives behind this were often well-intentioned; Indian advocates believed adopting white culture was the only way to raise them from poverty. While the policy largely succeeded in alienating indigenous people from their roots, the author points out, the poverty remains. Yet he has not written a polemic but rather a gritty saga of his family’s struggle through the first half of the 20th century. The matriarch was his grandmother Rosa, who raised five sons with only modest help from two husbands. The last of her sons, David, was born with Down Syndrome, called “mongolism” at the time. Unable to care for himself, he was nevertheless strong, curious, and anxious to be part of the world around him. Pragmatically, his older brother John taught him to saw and chop wood. (Readers will be surprised at the immense amount every family required.) When Dave wandered off or created a minor disaster, the community made allowances. No one except the reserve’s white establishment—Indian agent, priest, and doctor, all portrayed unsparingly—suggested sending him to an institution. The author considers his Uncle Dave a symbol of his tribe’s stubborn struggle to preserve their way of life in the face of an intrusive white society. Their success, like Dave’s, was spotty. As the century progressed, the increasingly sophisticated Indians wrested control of their affairs from the government, but they also abandoned the reserve for the city in growing numbers.
Not a happy ending, but nonetheless a lively and appealing memoir.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55263-051-X
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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