A brief, often delightful remembrance that blooms into a warm tale of frontier life.
A memoir of a teacher in Idaho’s Hells Canyon area in the early 20th century.
Harris, who died in 1979, was an educator-turned-journalist who first published this recollection in 1971. This second edition, edited and republished by Marilyn Allen, the author’s niece, is a welcome reprise. It investigates Harris’ long-standing attachment to a place that offered, in her words, “a rough life with no refinements.” She first arrived in Buck Creek, Idaho, in 1916 for an eight-month stint teaching children. Things were tense from the start, as the 16-year-old author had lied about her age to get a job in the rough-and-tumble frontier. She diligently documents her time at her first outpost, describing a hot-and-cold affair with a local boy with the same wit that she uses to recount her riding a seemingly sick mule into a nearby town. Things became less quaint, however, when she accepted a four-month post teaching at a camp on forest-reserve land. Her new position required her to care for seven kids from Monday to Friday, because the terrain was too harsh for them to regularly travel to and from the school building. She and the children camped out in tents, and their neighbor was a strange, cranky old man with no apparent affection for anything but sugar. In this section, the memoir provides eye-opening insights into the American education system before World War I; the schoolchildren, who belonged to nomadic ranching families, only had four months per year for schooling and hadn’t yet learned to read. Harris, ever the teacher, is always ready to provide readers with historic, economic, and geographic context for the events that she recalls, and these explanations can, at times, be somewhat dry. The dire conditions, however, are the perfect host for Harris’ frank humor, most notably in her account of the final weeks of school, when multiple difficulties befell the young schoolmarm. Joseph’s illustrations of a young Harris frolicking in nature and caring for children only strengthen its charms.
A brief, often delightful remembrance that blooms into a warm tale of frontier life.Pub Date: April 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9565-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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