by Chloe Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 13, 2021
A dog lover’s warmhearted delight.
In her first book, Shaw reflects on the meaning of canine companionship and how dogs transformed her life.
After the family dog, Booker, died, a grieving Shaw began contemplating not only what her beloved canine did for her, but also the fears that had been her constant companions. The author was an only child, and her mother's Afghan hound, Easy, became her first “Dog-Sister” and helped her navigate the space between loving parents who avoided strong emotions. Later, a Scottie named Agatha 2 became the first canine to get “lodged in my heart.” The pair grew so attached that the author herself was almost indistinguishable from Agatha 2, with relationships to her “humans” that mirrored those her Scottie had with them. Yet Agatha 2 could not save Shaw from the anxiety that gnawed her from within and manifested as “horribly ravaged fingernails” in an otherwise well-groomed adolescence. Her first teenage love, Josh, taught her how to intimately know herself but caused her guilt for spending time away from an aging Agatha 2. Her dog’s death coincided with a cancer diagnosis for Josh’s mother and high school graduation. Shaw decided to break up with Josh, and when she fell in love again, it would be with her future husband and Booker, a dog she realized had united the “Dog, Girl, Woman, Wife, Mother,” only to shatter her with his death. “Just as Booker’s life so exquisitely fused my separate selves,” she writes, “Booker’s death left me splintered all over again.” Forced to confront her anxiety, Shaw came to understand that the only way to remain whole was to “let in the dogs” of her own fears and feelings. This poignant and gracefully written memoir amply embraces the complexities of the human-dog relationship in a uniquely personal way, and it’s also a moving story of self-acceptance.
A dog lover’s warmhearted delight.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-21074-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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IndieBound Bestseller
by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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