This quirky motivational fable about a brave crab deftly encourages readers to develop resilience and a growth mindset.
A crab who explores new territory serves as a metaphor for human experiences.
Koch’s debut self-help book follows in the tradition of Who Moved My Cheese? and Our Iceberg Is Melting and stars Wilber, a crab. He lives with his family (a cast of crabs) in the Louisiana bayou. While the rest of the cast (“They treated one another with respect and love, most of the time”) is content with its geographically limited world, Wilber has dreams of exploring. When the cast is captured and stored in a hamper on a fishing boat, he has the opportunity to embark on an adventure. The other crabs stay behind in the hamper (“Oh, Wilber, please don’t talk about leaving the cast and exploring,” says one). But Wilber—after a false start and with a confidence boost and encouragement from Penny the Pelican, who teaches him to visualize success through a technique she calls “the Wilber Effect”—climbs out and investigates his unfamiliar surroundings. He overcomes fear and meets a crab named Tilley, who has also benefited from Penny’s advice. After spending the night outside, Wilber reunites with his cast, which, despite the earlier hostility, is now proud of his achievements and encourages his expeditions. Each chapter concludes with a helpful “Personal Perspective” section that consists of questions (“Have you been in circumstances that made you question the goals or dreams you previously set for yourself?”) designed to connect Wilber’s story directly to readers’ experiences. The crab’s tale is clearly intended to serve as an example for readers confronting new situations and challenges of confidence. Many readers will likely appreciate the simplicity of the short text and find it useful for guiding their thoughts and developing strategies for moving out of their comfort zones, though Penny’s “Law of Attraction”–style insights will not appeal to all. The book is illustrated throughout with uncredited, cartoon-style drawings that supply a touch of additional whimsy to the tale.
This quirky motivational fable about a brave crab deftly encourages readers to develop resilience and a growth mindset.Pub Date: March 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982216-72-6
Page Count: 66
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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