An elementary book of poem and songs that stalls at surface level.
Loechel presents a collection of poems and songs celebrating the little things.
The author explores themes of creation, nature, and beauty in this assemblage of verses and song lyrics (accompanied by sheet music); she delights in the simple pleasures of life. “See the sea with all its beauty, / There is power in the waves, / Still the waves we cannot number, / They make stronger water caves,” she writes in “Sea.” Loechel describes cucumbers and their little flowers, espouses the gloriousness of the echinacea plant, and marvels at the variety of gem stones. She praises the healing powers of yamoa bark and the versatility of bay trees, and catalogs different kinds of ants. The importance of faith is a recurring theme in multiple poems; a speaker cautions against worshipping money (“Money did not make our birth. / The whole of creation is the owner, / Which money did not buy, / Money isn’t the owner, / So money is a lie”) (“Rich”). Loechel maintains a steady rhythm and rhyming scheme throughout the book, but the poems are rudimentary, and much of the language is generic. Lines like “Butterflies are pretty flutters, / And this is what we know, / Butterflies are lovely creatures, / With pretty wings on show” (“Butterflies”) seem better suited to a book of children’s verse. “Aboriginals,” a song about aboriginal people that states “I heard one say to my own face, / I’ll teach you to eat snakes” feels problematic, as does the claim that “Honey raw might cure covid” (“Honey Strength”). The author repeats one of the poems, “To the Garden,” 11 times throughout the collection, with only a one-word variation in the item harvested (peas, zucchini, rockmelon, garlic, sweetcorn, potatoes, strawberries, and pumpkins); there is plenty of zeal for the natural world here, but little poetic depth.
An elementary book of poem and songs that stalls at surface level.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781982296469
Page Count: 136
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
