A feisty and readable outlook on parenting.
A debut child-rearing guide that concentrates on fostering good judgment and self-awareness in children.
In their nonfiction debut, martial arts instructor Chris Santillo and Holly Santillo, a martial arts instructor and children’s-choir conductor, take a position against “helicopter” parents, who use various methods to remove any challenges or disappointments in their children’s lives. The authors say that “childhoods replete with instant everything, including instant gratification and guaranteed gold stars, rob this generation of the opportunity to build independence through hard work and occasional failure.” The Santillos predicate their book on a deceptively simple observation: Even the most fulfilling life requires resilience in order to make it through occasional rough patches. Their book’s main strength is how it unpacks the notion of resilience by showing how it’s grounded in strength and adaptability and by explaining its three pillars: learning, integrity, and service. The authors reveal the nuances of these principles, in part, through personal stories of their own parenting adventures as well as occasional insets that explain specific lessons (“First the why….Then the how”). The chapters also provide “ASSESSMENT” sections featuring pointed questions that are designed to bring lessons into focus, such as “Does my child seek opportunities to serve others in both small and large ways?” The authors alternate between admonishing some standard parenting approaches (“Children who have been taught with bribes or rewards learn one primary lesson: how to do anything for a gold star”) and encouraging mothers and fathers to have more confidence in themselves: “You guided your children in learning how to walk, to talk, to hold a spoon, and to smile….Your children want to learn, and best of all, they want to learn from you.” In clear, gently forceful language, the authors lay out a clear program of building resilience that may help children later on in their adult lives. Parents, both new and old, will find much of value in these pages.
A feisty and readable outlook on parenting.Pub Date: March 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1195-5
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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