Photojournalist Ancona (Harvest, not reviewed, etc.) takes his camera to the streets in this exploration of outdoor community murals in cities across the US. A look at the cave paintings of Lascaux, early church frescoes, and murals painted in Mexico City after the 1910 revolution place his subject in historical perspective. He kicks off with a pair of colorful photographs: “A tiny street in the San Francisco Mission District called Balmy Ally has become famous for the murals that cover its doors, fences, and walls.” “A mural painted on two garage doors shows the people resisting oppression by a military government in Central America.” A Philadelphia mural called “Common Threads” compares the hairstyles of high-school students and 18th-century women. As Ancona explains, the students assisted the artist by posing as models. A smaller photo shows the full face of the 7,500-square-foot mural, cars dwarfed in the foreground, while a detail of an African-American girl with cascading braids dominates the spread. A series of photographs depicts a mural created for a Boston housing project. Writes Ancona, “The artist organized more than three hundred children and residents to make clay tiles that were stamped, fired, and then assembled to create the mural.” Murals in Albuquerque, Chicago, and the South Bronx are also shown. A unique chronicle of our country’s diversity and an engaging look at the connection between the arts and activism: Ancona’s latest is first rate. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7614-5131-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay.
Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
SEEN & HEARD
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