A nature-centered collection that promotes intergenerational community but may reach a narrower audience than intended.
The Vilhauers, a mother-and-son team, present sensory poems to encourage children and adults to connect with nature.
In 15 simple poems, 9-year-old Clay Vilhauer and his mother, Amber Vilhauer, have co-authored their second book after The Long Forest Trail (2023) to offer spare visual and metaphysical descriptions and gentle reflections (“leaves light behind that outlives it, / giving long after it is gone”) on the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, the rain, and rainbows, among other topics. Each poem takes up less than a full page, with some only five lines long, and can be digested in minutes. Doran provides sleek linework illustrations, enriching each entry’s thin-lined doodle with a loose wash of watercolor that intentionally goes beyond the lines and invites children to emulate. Though the poems are accessible to elementary-age readers, the diction sometimes feels slightly older, with concepts including galaxies, momentum, and impact mentioned. Certain lines ring truer than others. In “the moon,” for example, the last two lines, “moves the entire ocean without making a sound / all of life looks up to it, connecting us since the beginning,” feel much more grounded than the first two, “changes in phase yet moves through space whole, generous, and constant / does not judge or fear the dark, only lights it up,” which imbue the moon with a little too much human agency. The co-authors thoughtfully explore the overall theme of slowing down, recognizing one’s inner light, and connecting with loved ones—especially children—through contemplating nature. The final entry, titled “your turn,” encourages readers to find something in nature, consider what they can learn from it, and then share those lessons with others, perhaps on the book’s blank pages meant for that purpose.
A nature-centered collection that promotes intergenerational community but may reach a narrower audience than intended.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781633311619
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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