Compelling religious reading on its own, but also enhances its source material.
Gurney’s devotional looks at the life of Jesus through the eyes of various biblical figures.
The narrative of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is well-detailed in the Bible, and those accounts feature many characters who either embrace him as their savior or despise him as a threat to the status quo. This devotional examines 21 of these characters, using short, first-person narratives to humanize their roles. The author digs deeper than just the obvious choices of major characters, opting to omit some, e.g., the Virgin Mary, entirely, and brings to life instead such viewpoints as that of the innkeeper who allowed Mary and Joseph the use of his barn or Simeon, the aged prophet who God promised would see the Messiah during his lifetime. A music-loving shepherd imparts the majesty of the angelic chorus that announces Christ’s birth, while high priest Caiaphas explains that Jesus’ crucifixion arose out of a complicated religious and political environment. Each character speaks in a unique voice, from Simeon’s psalmlike pleading with God to Herod the Great’s self-righteous dictation to his grand vizier. These voices show both the author’s talent for character development and his close reading of the Bible. Nowhere does the author claim that his interpretation is infallible. His use of sensory details to describe the crowded streets of Jerusalem and the tranquility of the desert countryside enhance both the characters and the biblical stories.
Compelling religious reading on its own, but also enhances its source material.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477222928
Page Count: 108
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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