An appealing, celebratory offering with an urgent message.
An homage to trees in poetry, prose, and art.
Artist and activist Holten has gathered more than 50 contributions from writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and others, all sharing thoughts about our indelible connection to trees. Some entries are as brief as a sentence or two: “I am the seed of the free. I intend to bear great fruit,” Sojourner Truth writes. There’s a recipe for making oak gall ink, which can be used for writing (as it was for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) or staining a piece of furniture. Holten includes the lyrics to Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as a song from singer/songwriter Susan McKeown. Some entries refer to particular species: an ancient elm cut down by the British during the Revolutionary War; evergreens, whose tips can be used for sun tea or salt; junipers, apricots, maples, and a baobab, among many others. When artist Maya Lin took on the project of creating a sculptural installation at Madison Square Park, she chose to transport Atlantic white cedars from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, trees that had died due to extreme weather events related to climate change, to create a ghost forest—temporal, transient, and a stark warning about the perils of climate change, an issue that concerns many writers. Mary Reynolds writes about the creation of the rewilding project We Are The ARK, while Indigenous leader Nemo Andy Guiquita reports on threats to the Amazonian rainforest. William Corwin and Colin Renfrew, thinking about the origins of human creativity, speculate about why Paleolithic humans did not depict trees in their cave drawings. The book is graced throughout with Holten’s delicate artwork: dense threadlike forests; drawings of seeds, leaves, and roots; and her inventive Tree Alphabet. Other contributors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Powers, Ada Lovelace, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Even Plato makes an appearance. Ross Gay provides the introduction.
An appealing, celebratory offering with an urgent message.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781953534682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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