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EVERYONE'S CHILDREN

Name: EVERYONE'S CHILDREN
Author: Claire McCarthy
ISBN: 0-684-81876-0

A PEDIATRICIAN'S STORY OF AN INNER-CITY PRACTICE

by Claire McCarthy ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1998

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The author of Learning How the Heart Beats (1995) fulfills the promise of her first book in this wise and heartfelt portrait of an inner-city health clinic. McCarthy, who first wrote of becoming a doctor at Harvard Medical School, is now a full-fledged pediatrician at the Martha Eliot Health Center, serving a mostly Latino housing development in Boston's Jamaica Plain section. It's a world far removed from the one of her privileged upbringing, and while she lives with the feeling of fitting into neither one, she is clearly captured by the richness of human experience her work has made her witness to. Her work world is one where people need each other, and she responds to her patients not just as a doctor but as a human being: When Luz, the mother of one of her sickle-cell anemia patients, is raped and beaten, McCarthy takes the woman and her small son into her home for the night. The caring flows both ways, for when McCarthy becomes pregnant with her second child, the mothers at the clinic are generous with advice. Most problems she encounters have no neat solutions, and she becomes expert at compromising, improvising, and knowing when to back off. As in her earlier book, McCarthy does not sentimentalize those she writes about. She sees her patients whole, with no glossing over of the crime, danger, abuse, neglect, and poverty that mark their lives. She cannot make life fair, cannot cure every child's ills, cannot turn an addicted mother into a warm and loving one, yet she shows us that there is hope, that one person can make a difference. The message implicit in her title is that the children of the poor are everyone's children, and we must all care. Deeply moving and wonderfully human.

Pub Date: March 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-684-81876-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.