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ROWING TO LATITUDE

Name: ROWING TO LATITUDE
Author: Jill Fredston
ISBN: 0-374-28180-7

JOURNEYS ALONG THE ARCTIC’S EDGE

by Jill Fredston ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2001

Extraordinary trips; ordinary writing.

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In unremarkable prose, an intrepid adventurer recounts her rowboat experiences contending with some of the earth’s most beautiful and treacherous waters.

Fredston and her husband have divided lives: In the winters they are avalanche experts and co-directors of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center near Anchorage; in the summers they take extensive trips (in separate craft, sometimes for thousands of miles) on wild waterways. Paddling, says Fredston, is their favorite way to travel: “It allows us to tickle the shoreline, and opens our senses to the rhythms around us.” Fredston begins with a bit of autobiography. For her tenth birthday, she received her first rowboat, and has since used every opportunity to get to the remote waterways of the northern world and advance her considerable skills. She recounts seven long trips (with an interlude about avalanche rescues), the first in 1986 from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska. Then it’s a journey down the entire length of the Yukon River, another in the Chukchi Sea, then down the Mackenzie River and along the coasts of Labrador and Norway, with a final trip in Greenland’s waters. Lots of miles, bears, and high winds for a little volume, and therein lies one of the problems. Each of these trips offers enough material to fill a book, so there’s a pervasive sense of incompleteness, a rush to load another boat and shove it out into the water before we’ve really figured out, or even thought much, about where we are. Pretty soon we don’t care. Fredston cannot resist telling us what wonderful condition she is in, how quickly she learns, how cool she is under fire. She disdains people on cruise ships and those who pollute her playgrounds. But the most serious problem is her writing, which rarely breaks the surface of conventionality: “Most days were a rich collage”; “the country is a study in contrasts”; and so on.

Extraordinary trips; ordinary writing.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-374-28180-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.