A magical testament to perseverance.
Four Bindweed brothers travel, meet other plants, and encounter a hoe-wielding farmer in this illustrated children’s book.
Many weeds grow along a roadside ditch, among them the Bindweeds. Four of the bell-shaped white flowers are brothers who decide to embark on an adventure; if anything gets in their way, they figure they’ll just grow over it and keep going. In a pasture, they meet a plant with large white blossoms: a thornapple. The plant is unfriendly (“You’re no kin of mine! My flowers are the flowers of angels!”) so the brothers move on. They rest with some hospitable dock weeds, observe a meadow of flowers, and are astonished to discover a field where plants grow in regular rows. The field plants warn the brothers about weed-chopping farmers. Continuing on the road, the brothers are amazed again when they encounter their cousins, huge blue flowers on a vine climbing high. The siblings address their cousins with awe: “Blues of great fame….You truly are the glories of the morn!” Flattered, the morning glories invite the Bindweeds to stay awhile. Unfortunately, just as the field plants warned, a farmer comes with his hoe and chops out the Bindweeds, leaving them on the roadside—but the tough plants root themselves again, crowing: “Ha! We’ve outwitted the hoe! We’re unstoppable!” Glenn (Pandora, 2018, etc.), a former flower arranger at the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in California, again shows her blend of storytelling magic and lovely illustrations. The journey motif is classic, and the Bindweeds (as is traditional) gain experience as they lose their innocence. The dialogue has a touch of strangeness that feels just right for talking plants. Yet the story doesn’t overly anthropomorphize them; it remains centered on the plant world, taking account of each one’s particular habits of growth and, by extension, personality. For example, the plants growing by the Bindweeds’ original roadside include “Radishes, who were known to be wild” and “the persistent Docks, thought to be coarse.” Still, the author’s watercolor images are the book’s stars, capturing the delicacy but also the toughness of flowering weeds.
A magical testament to perseverance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Apologue Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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