Many parents, divorced or not, will see reflections of themselves in this pleasant collection.
A collection of humorous, sometimes poignant essays from an award-winning writer and happily divorced father who confesses to hating kids’ music but loving Barry Manilow tunes.
Schwartzberg (The 40-Year Old Version, 2009) returns with another mostly lighthearted ensemble of short reflections on life as a zany but loving dad trying to raise kids after a divorce. Except for a few f-words and some milder expletives, the humor in this easy beach read is almost squeaky clean. Most parents can relate to “Lost In Space,” about the author’s heart-stopping ordeal when he temporarily loses his son in an electronics store. Readers who have endured the trials and tribulations of selling Girl Scout cookies will chuckle at “Tough Cookies,” a series of tongue-in-cheek office memos in which Schwartzberg harasses co-workers to purchase more boxes. In “Football Redefined,” he creates silly definitions for football terms; for example, in a parent’s world, “Good Field Position” is a “shady picnic spot in the park that’s far from dog poop.” Although most of the essays are fun but shallow dips in the family pool, a few are more somber and affecting, such as the story of a teenage accident victim in “The Girl Who,” and touching reflections about his father and grandfather. The author’s self-effacing humor also reveals some insecurities, particularly when he ponders his role as a dad who no longer lives in the same house as his children. In “Dad to the Bone,” for example, he wistfully details the luxurious amount of time his kids’ stepfather can spend with them: “This man sees them in the morning and at night, takes them out to dinner, wakes them up, helps them with their homework, and tells them to brush their teeth. He sits with them in toy-filled waiting rooms, argues with them, jokes with them and even disciplines them.” In the end, however, Schwartzberg realizes that as his kids’ biological father, he will always hold the most special place in their hearts.
Many parents, divorced or not, will see reflections of themselves in this pleasant collection.Pub Date: June 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939288523
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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