No high-flown adventure with Saint-Exupéry, and no more sincere than a flight attendant's “B’bye!” at the destination’s...
A flight attendant’s lighter-than-air view of his job and the crackpot customers for whom he cares. Mild-mannered, balding, big, and male in a heavily female workforce, Hester casts a jaundiced eye on human nature as it manifests itself squeezed into a metal tube and fed on questionable food with toy utensils. He takes off with descriptions of barf, then the really high adventure proceeds with tales of airborne vermin and other forms of animal life as well as brawling passengers and still other forms of animal life. There are attempted infiltrations from steerage to first class (it won’t work), semi-nude passengers, and baby bottles filled with Classic Coke and sugar. Our attendant alerts us to layover shenanigans, bossy captains, addled cockpit and cabin crews, equipment failures, inadequate overhead bins, turbulence, and, naturally, air rage. Along with the toilet humor is a lot of chatty single-entendre about sex. And all with explicit adverbs, daring adjectives, and extravagant similes—yet it’s no more offensive than a “yours-to-take-home” in-flight magazine. Newspaper clippings are provided to lend credence to the yarns.
No high-flown adventure with Saint-Exupéry, and no more sincere than a flight attendant's “B’bye!” at the destination’s jetway, but it’ll probably meet its modest aim of making the trip to O’Hare just fly. (7 b&w illustrations)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26958-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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