Needs judicious editing and a more interesting visual style to realize its full child-pleasing potential.
A hungry fly avoids a swatting but then finds himself in need of rescue when he ends up on a garden spider’s menu in this picture book by debut author Carr and illustrator Jakosalem (Nicky’s Story, 2016, etc.)
A foraging fly named Fred has quite an adventure in this simple picture book for young readers. Nearly flattened by a homemaker with a rolled up newspaper, Fred falls into a garbage pail (“potato peelings and bits of carrots, mushrooms and egg shells”), lands on a compost heap, finds a hungry spider on his trail, and escapes with help from his best snail and slug buddies. Fueled by a gentle spirit, the plot has undoubted kid appeal with its sympathetic, garbage-loving hero—and the author’s rather ingenious (if slimy) fix for Fred’s broken wing. The book’s uneven execution is another matter, however. The author undermines his eventful storytelling with awkward or repetitious wording and run-on and incomplete sentences: “Looking around Fred could see lots of nice food lying on the shelves he could also see a glass jug”; “Fred was beginning to feel drowsy it was a very comfortable place to rest he had all the food he wanted.” This perplexing lack of attention to sentence structure is especially disappointing because the author has clearly put thought into envisioning a fly’s-eye world of tempting rubbishy bits, warm compost, slug slime, hairy spider legs, and sunshine. Fred is a distinct character whose food has to be “nice and soft because he had no teeth,” whose mother worries about him, and who can rely on good friends. While colorful and sweet, Jakosalem’s somewhat mundane, cartoonlike illustrations, boxed in wide-margined squares over blocks of text, would benefit from a more fluid approach.
Needs judicious editing and a more interesting visual style to realize its full child-pleasing potential.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-6225-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.
Ng selects 20 stories that illustrate why we might still read fiction in a time of disinformation and lies.
As the trials and tribulations of the 21st century have unfolded, the Best American Short Stories anthology has become a particular way of taking the temperature of each passing year. As Ng writes in her introduction to the latest group, “Short stories in particular can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values—then allowing us to bring ourselves into alignment with what we believe. In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.” Many of them are also fun to read, a quality appreciated more than ever by depressed and overwhelmed readers. The stories are ordered alphabetically, a structure maintained in the following selection, which is unfortunately limited by space. “Take Me to Kirkland,” by Sarah Anderson, is very funny, a little weird, and certainly one of Costco’s finest hours. “What Would I Do for You, What Would You Do for Me?” by Emma Binder is a cinematic mini-thriller about a trans kid visiting his hometown, terrified of being “clocked” by the people he grew up with after he saves a local from drowning. “Time of the Preacher,” by Bret Anthony Johnston, is one of several pandemic stories—in it, a snake, which may or may not be under the refrigerator, inspires a quarantine-breaking cry for help from a fence-builder’s ex-wife. Another story of that time, “Yellow Tulips,” by Nathan Curtis Roberts, also combines endearing, funny first-person narration with a more serious theme. A Mormon man in an uptight Utah suburb has to manage his developmentally disabled adult son through the complexities of quarantine. One day, he discovers that his son has “gotten into the provisions Mormons are all but commanded to keep, eating Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff from their jars.…Brig, we put these things aside for the apocalypse,’” the father says, while his son “grinned gleefully, sugary goo smeared across his lips and fingers. ‘It’s an apocalypse now!’”
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780063399808
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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