Easy-reading verses, replete with pithy truths and charming illustrations.
Widick’s book of poetry champions life’s small joys.
One of a trilogy, this poetry collection plainly announces its intentions to serve as “a gentle reminder that we don’t have to look far for things that warm our soul. Joy, the author suggests, can be found “in everyday things.” The poems contained within this book illuminate life’s simplest pleasures, including enjoying a cup of coffee alongside a copy of Rumi’s poetry just as the sun rises (“Sweet Sips”). The beauty of animals grazing on gentle hills is noted in the poem “Antelope,” (“Big-picture scope / Grazing on the amazing / Unbinding leaps / Top of the hillside / Along the waterside”) as is the satisfaction yielded by a sturdy drinking vessel “saved from [a] Cuba trip” in “Solid as a Rock Tumbler.” Other poems, like “Success,” are slightly broader in scope, using clipped lines to reframe success as a state defined by warmth, generosity, and “tenderness” rather than by achievement. The visual elements of the collection lend character and warmth to the author’s words—each poem is rendered in intricate, willowy script, accompanied by illustrator Taylor-Pestell’s line art depicting such subjects as astronauts, animals, and a woman serenely watering a tree that springs from the clouds. The poetry itself is fairly sparse and simple. It can register as familiar life advice, more focused on jaunty rhyme than content (“Chase and Bear Hug / Your Dreams in the Express Lane / at Your Own Pace / Your Sweet Way in a Worldly Vast Array”). For readers inclined toward the simple pleasures the book promotes, the optimism and ornate illustrations these pages contain offer their own appeal. The passion that the collaborating writer and artist demonstrate is infectious, lending an upbeat charm to the work overall.
Easy-reading verses, replete with pithy truths and charming illustrations.Pub Date: May 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781088111925
Page Count: 28
Publisher: North Coast Post
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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