by James Campbell ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2016
Informative, humorous, and full of a love of nature.
A father and daughter’s adventures in Alaska.
When Campbell’s (The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea, 2007, etc.) daughter Aidan turned 15, it was time to fulfill a promise that he’d made before she was in kindergarten: someday, they would go to Alaska together. Originally, the father-daughter duo planned to canoe one of Alaska’s majestic rivers, but when the author’s cousin and his wife, “some of the last hunter-trapper-gatherers living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” asked for help building a log cabin in the wild, they decided to shift gears. With humor and honesty, Campbell brings readers along for the adventure, which is full of swarms of hungry mosquitoes, the fear of grizzly bears, and the push-pull relationship between a teenage girl and her father. Both of them overcame weariness, muscle aches, and their own stubborn personalities and learned to enjoy the work and to feel the wonder of their natural surroundings. All too soon, they were headed back to their hometown in rural Wisconsin. Discontent quickly settled, and before long, they were planning another trip to Alaska, this time in early winter to help the cousin on his traplines. They faced frostbite, hunger, and more hardships but shared the beauty of the Alaskan dusk and the aurora borealis. Back in Wisconsin once again, they longed for the openness of the Arctic, so they planned a third trip, this time down the Hulahula River. Once again, father and daughter had to face difficulties at every turn, including whitewater rapids, more bears, and each other, but perseverance and love overcame any obstacles. Campbell expertly blends facts on the flora, fauna, and general life in the Alaskan bush with his reflections on being middle-aged, with many adventurous years behind him, as opposed to his daughter, whose quest for adventure has only just begun.
Informative, humorous, and full of a love of nature.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-307-46124-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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