A warm and heartfelt account of establishing the treasured childcare institution HelloBaby.
Frisch and Simonelli detail the history of an innovative childcare initiative.
In this volume, Simonelli, a journalist, and child welfare activist Frisch tell the story of how she founded HelloBaby, a free-play space for babies, toddlers and their parents and caregivers, based in the rough environs of Chicago’s South Side. At HelloBaby, children are given plenty of open-ended play and activity time, and their caregivers, in addition to being able to relax for a bit, are given first-hand demonstrations of how their children blossom when taken out of their usual “play desert” (“a community where accessible play spaces are hard to find”) and allowed to flourish. To spread the word about her prospective project and perhaps secure some official funding or sanction, Frisch originally tried to interest then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and gubernatorial candidate J. B. Pritzker, but her overtures failed to elicit any response. So, Frisch pivoted to a “bottom-up” approach, contacting local community groups and churches, and, in 2017, HelloBaby opened its doors. Frisch was responding to the self-evident fact that, “unfortunately, the social systems we’ve built around families don’t always support the natural processes designed to help babies grow up strong, happy, and loved.” She notes many reasons for this—“entrenched racism, de facto segregation, the deterioration of the nuclear family, and generational histories of trauma”—and provides readers with a series of case studies of the parents and children who’ve been helped by HelloBaby since it began.
Those case studies make up a significant portion of the book and give it a very human face. They’re well chosen by Frisch and well shaped by Simonelli into personalized parables that effectively illustrate the many kinds of help young children and their adult caretakers often need—and the kinds of help HelloBaby tries to provide. There are profiles of babies like Tucker, born in rural Illinois to heroin-addicted parents, who decided, when Tucker was an infant, that they couldn’t care for him anymore, and Louise, who was born in a run-down inner-city hospital to a mother facing criminal charges and suffering from mental health issues. Alongside these personal stories, the authors engagingly tell the story of creating HelloBaby, covering everything from personnel and philosophy to the intricacies of how the actual space would be designed. “The whole space was created with an understanding of how it would be experienced from a baby’s perspective,” they write. “Over and over again, the question was asked: What would be at eye-level for an infant or toddler?” Positive moments that can uplift an entire day were “gently kneaded into the design.” Throughout, Frisch urges her readers to adopt the HelloBaby ideology: “My call to you is to pick the thing you know how to do, that you love to do, and share it,” she writes. “Even a little good can ripple out in ways you will likely never see.” A warm and heartfelt account of establishing the treasured childcare institution HelloBaby.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781953943255
Page Count: -
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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