A good resource for art therapists, teachers, and caregivers.
Stewart’s guide provides step-by-step instructions for various therapeutic art projects.
After running a preschool for 10 years, the author switched directions and concentrated on helping seniors. She found that, with modifications, the same type of art instruction that is fun for children just beginning their lives can also serve a population with many years behind them (“You never stopped being an artist,” Stewart notes). The guide includes projects suitable for stroke recovery classes. After suffering a stroke, people may have difficulty with their own facial expressions, manual dexterity, and isolation; recommended projects include drawing faces representing emotions onto balloons and painting different types of masks; some have themes, such as Mardi Gras, Halloween, and Phantom of the Opera, or use mixed media for decoration. (Per the author, these projects may especially resonate with stroke survivors, whose changed appearances may make them feel they’re in disguise already.) All of the activities encourage social interactions. Stewart also discusses obstacles older adults might face, such as dementia and hearing or vision loss. The book is well structured and organized. Activities are grouped into categories, like “brain,” “memory,” “senses,” and “teamwork.” Each project is rated with symbols; for example, dollar signs signify the cost of the supplies and each clock-face symbol represents half an hour of preparation time. Stewart lists the specific supplies needed and gives steps to follow for every activity. She sometimes includes templates to use, such as the shape of a mask, a tree, or a set of postcards. Photographic examples give further ideas for how each project might look. Some of the simpler activities, such as cutting up magazines or drawing partner portraits, don’t seem to require the detailed instructions they’re given, and readers may wish for more stories about the author’s classes to give inspiration and add interest. But Stewart’s focus on an older population that is usually overlooked is admirable, as is her emphasis on making art fun for people of all abilities.
A good resource for art therapists, teachers, and caregivers.Pub Date: March 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781039177055
Page Count: 184
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
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