A vivid mix of local color and tongue-in-cheek wit, albeit with loud sour notes.
From a Labrador native, homespun “recitations” in equally homespun rhyme.
Written for oral performance (most are available as recordings) and easy to read aloud despite plenty of regional jargon, these 13 original yarns feature big dollops of wry humor. There’s fog thick enough to eat (“Mother used to dice it with pork fat and onions, / Or she’d mix it with mustard as a poultice for bunions”); the horrific consequences of trying to unclog a septic tank using a pump fitted with an old boat motor; and the experiences of a “Man of La Manche,” who is abducted not by aliens but Capt. Kirk, attempting to beam a moose up to the Enterprise. Recurring characters include 90-year-old “Super Nan,” who vanquishes a bullying polar bear at Bingo, and Uncle Jim Buckle. Paddon trips hard over the edges of good taste in “Berries,” a violent tale of a berry-picking war during which Jim takes a second wife, “a woman best described as Atilla the Hen,” after his first is killed by a land mine—but even that one comes to an uproarious climax, followed by an amicable resolution: “I guess blood’s…even thicker than jam.” It’s hard to tell from the small, roughly drawn figures in Major’s appropriately sober vignettes, but the (human) cast is likely all white. The glossary is extensive and essential for readers outside of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A vivid mix of local color and tongue-in-cheek wit, albeit with loud sour notes. (Verse tales. 11-15)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-927917-15-2
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Running the Goat
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Starting with an overview of how researchers look at humor, this uneven guide to a topic with potentially high kid-appeal...
A light introduction to the appealing, complicated subject of humor lacks the depth to do it justice.
Starting with an overview of how researchers look at humor, this uneven guide to a topic with potentially high kid-appeal meanders through loosely connected aspects of humor, offering anecdotes, quotes from experts and intriguing facts. Short chapters touch on the anatomy of laughter and the history of laugh tracks. A longer chapter discusses how humor differs between genders, among cultures and age groups and throughout history. Readers may be most interested in the final chapter on stand-up comedy and how to be funny. Jackson relies heavily on quotes from interviews with humor experts, working their names and titles awkwardly into the text. The academic nature of the quotes, suitable to a more substantial study of humor, jars with the author’s otherwise conversational, entry-level approach to the subject, raising questions about the intended audience. Generic cartoonish pictures and occasional jokes in boldface type illustrate points made in the text. Short sidebars explore topics such as the funny bone, tickling and texting abbreviations about humor.Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01244-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Bottom line: Stimulating for math geeks and proto–math geeks, more confusing than enlightening for the rest of us.
This breezy look at the tools, techniques, uses and universality of mathematics doesn’t add up to more than a muddle.
Patel begins by nonsensically arguing that since math is dependent on formal proofs and “beauty” (rather than evidence and experiments, which “don’t count for much”; take that, Galileo!), it’s not a science but “more like an art.” The author proceeds, however, to demonstrate the opposite by tracing its development through history as a tool for measurements and calculations that have promoted our understanding of the physical universe. Following opening chapters introducing number systems, primes, sets, zero and infinity, he whirls past types and uses of graphs and tessellations, imaginary numbers, algorithms, chaos theory, Newton’s laws of motion and more in single-topic spreads crowded with cartoon illustrations and boxed passages in high-contrast colors. Along with careless errors, such as twice misspelling Prussia’s capital and equating yards with meters in a measurement, the author delivers minidisquisitions on Menger sponges, Euler’s number and other curiosities that are unhelpfully vague, dizzyingly technical or both. Furthermore, on different pages he offers different etymologies for the term “mathematics,” and one of the several “Try this at home” demonstrations contradicts an adjacent claim that humans are bilaterally symmetrical.
Bottom line: Stimulating for math geeks and proto–math geeks, more confusing than enlightening for the rest of us. (glossary, perfunctory index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7534-7072-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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