Starting with zigzag lines on paper, Hughes's book proceeds through musical notes, the ebb and flow of water, a man batting a ball, and a child spinning a top to show how all the world is connected by rhythm. People can control the way they paint, sing, or move, but they can't control the rhythms of their heartbeat any more than they can help being connected by those rhythms to all the other rhythms of the earth, the stars, and the universe. This message has implication within implications, and that it would be an exciting idea for discussion in the classroom is no accident (Hughes developed the approach while teaching at a Chicago Laboratory School). The new blue-gray and orange illustrations are perfectly in keeping with the period in which the book was first published (as The First Book of Rhythms, 1954); the introduction by Wynton Marsalis gives present-day star value and may lure readers who, ordinarily, wouldn't open a work of nonfiction, or any book at all. For Hughes's teenage fans and adults, what really snaps the book into a different focus is the historical overview of his work, particularly this one, presented by Robert G. O'Meally in the afterword. In a time in which society often looks back nostalgically to the postWW II America, it's good to be reminded that not even children's books were immune to the repressive influence of the McCarthy years. Thought-provoking. (Nonfiction. 8+)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-509856-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)
Sucked into "business" with a crooked classmate, bowling fanatic Lamar Washington makes good money faking his skills, but when a disruptive prank reveals his new friend Billy’s duplicity, he realizes how wrong it was to aim to be “the smoothest baddest dude” in Coffin, Ind.
This refreshing first novel is told in the first person with plenty of snappy dialogue by a smart African-American middle-schooler whose asthma has kept him out of the usual sports and whose older brother, a basketball star, consistently taunts him. Lamar’s new friendship threatens both a longstanding one and a promising new relationship with a girl. Tension mounts as Lamar is drawn further into an unsavory gambling world, realizing that his cheating is wrong but thrilled to have the cash to buy a Bubba Sanders bowling ball. A final, seriously physical fight with his brother leads to climactic arrests. The drab rigidity of Camp Turnaround, where Billy is incarcerated, contrasts with the excitement of the bowling alley Lamar loves. His grounding and community service seem appropriate. His understanding of the consequences of his prank fire alarm, both for his brother and for his basketball-mad small town, comes slowly and realistically, and the solution of his family issues is satisfying.
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199272-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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