A dramatic and absorbing tale of a historic storm.
Based on real events, this debut illustrated children’s book tells the story of how a boy, his family, and his dog survive the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.
Harry Berg is almost 4 years old when his family relocates from Detroit to Miami in search of new opportunities, like many white Northerners of the time. For Harry and his little brother, Russ, Miami is excitingly different from up north, with its palm trees, tropical flowers, and exotic-sounding neighborhoods. The Bergs settle in, adopt a stray puppy they name Patches, and move first into a duplex and then to a small house that, though covered in tar paper, actually contains an indoor toilet. Life is good—and then a huge storm hits Miami on Sept. 18, 1926. In their frail house, the family prays to stay alive. After passing safely through the eye of the hurricane, the group finds the next day even more terrifying. Harry, clutching Patches tight, manages to find safety with neighbors in their Model T; everyone survives. Though for years afterward the boy has nightmares, they eventually fade. Looking back in 2006, Harry realizes the hurricane taught him the importance of protecting those you love and to “Fear Nothing” because protective forces watch over everyone. An afterword, epilogue, and family photographs round out the story, along with simple but attractive monochrome images by debut illustrator Petersmark; the full-color cover is somewhat misleading in showing a cheerful Harry mid-hurricane. In his book, author Gordon Berg draws on family history and hurricane survivors’ accounts. The terrifying event comes alive, not just its destructiveness, but also small details. Hiding under a table, Harry notices “the faded alphabet I had scrawled underneath when I was in first grade. If I could rearrange the letters now, they would spell, ‘HELP US.’ ” Adding to the drama, the hurricane comments on the action like a psychopathic killer: “I blew her house apart a few hours ago. She is now tying herself to a tree….What is that she’s holding? A baby…wrapped in a blanket. My my.” Though harrowing, the story effectively emphasizes faith and mutual support.
A dramatic and absorbing tale of a historic storm.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-943995-96-7
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Mission Point Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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