A compelling look at one organization’s work to improve the education system in Africa.
A philanthropist’s story of bringing change to education in Ghana.
In this debut nonfiction book, Pritzker tells the story of the IDP Foundation’s Rising Schools Program, which works with local organizations to provide credit to small private schools in Africa. The author focuses on the program’s origins in Ghana, explaining how she, as the chair and cofounder of the IDP Foundation, became interested in these small schools, which often serve poor students who do not have access to government institutions (“community members frustrated with the lack of a functional primary school often start their own schools”). Pritzker takes readers through the foundation’s process of finding partners; working with and against existing philanthropic and bureaucratic norms; various challenges and successes; and the program’s prospects for sustainability. The author explains how the foundation established loan products to serve the schools, trained the schools’ founders in both financial management and teaching strategies, and provided ongoing support to allow the schools to continue to thrive after their loans were repaid. The stories of the educator-entrepreneurs who founded these schools are woven throughout the book, with in-depth profiles included at the end of many chapters. The focus on the stories of the school founders is key to the book’s value, allowing the reader to understand what initially drew Pritzker’s interest to their needs; the author is careful to avoid speaking on behalf of her organization’s clients, allowing them full agency. (Pritzker notes that she attempted to minimize her own story in favor of those of the foundation and the schools, but the details of her life that make it into the book are also fascinating.) The book balances potentially dry accounts of loan repayment rates and standardized testing with engaging stories of winning over skeptical administrators, figuring out how to teach critical concepts (the Muppets make an appearance), and seeing fragile enterprises develop solid roots in their underserved communities. The book will likely appeal to readers interested in international development work and school administrators open to new perspectives on how to succeed.
A compelling look at one organization’s work to improve the education system in Africa.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9798891387188
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
