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 top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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