An informed and engaging overview of the larger family systems so many young people need.
A series of firsthand accounts of the ways in which grandparents and other relatives can change children’s lives.
In her nonfiction debut, Butts takes as her subject the “thousands of families in which a grandparent or another close relative or family friend has said yes to caring for a child.” She writes about the anecdotal and documented advantages of what she refers to as collective, multigenerational care, adopting the term “grandfamilies” (which originated in a Boston housing project) for these extended family caregiving circles. The author asserts that, while the term may be relatively new, the reality has always been very much a part of American life, and that caregivers in these contexts should be supported and considered every bit as important as those in direct parental roles. Grandfamilies, she writes, “fight systems that abandon them…do time in waiting rooms and court hearings…put themselves at financial risk and sacrifice their own health,” all to give otherwise-rootless or at-risk kids opportunities for being loved and sheltered. To underscore and personalize these points, Butts includes in every chapter firsthand accounts of the pivotal role grandparents can play. Brittney Barros recounts her own harrowing experiences in foster care and the efforts her grandmother made to help her until, years later, the older woman was diagnosed with dementia and their roles changed. “In my family, we have all been caregivers,” she recalls. “It’s not just my grandmother taking care of me, or my taking care of her.” Although the author’s own discussions of these caregiving networks are always well supported and fascinating, it’s the personal accounts that give the book its life, colorfully illustrating so many of the ways in which grandfamilies can come together to protect their most vulnerable members. Butts notes how such systems have been strongly advocated for by anthropologists (including Margaret Mead), and these family dynamics will be warmly recognizable to many readers.
An informed and engaging overview of the larger family systems so many young people need.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9798896363286
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 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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