A tender, insightful reflection on everyday wonders of life with grandchildren.
Foley offers a collection of free-verse poems about the beauty and awe of grandparenthood.
The book opens with a scene of a newborn daughter, Eleanor, on a mother’s chest, with the grandparent speaker experiencing sympathy twinges in her own womb (“Grandmothers”). Another poem prays for infants in their “sheltering globes” in an intensive care unit, where “my first grandchild” was treated (“Neonatal ICU Prayer”). In “Alternate Reality,” set at Christmastime, a 2-year-old granddaughter, Evelyn, misidentifies a sanitation worker as Santa Claus while on a wintry walk. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a speaker struggles to connect with her granddaughter over a video call and longs for in-person outings (“Grandparenting in the Time of Covid-19”). Foley shares other snapshots of life as a grandmother, from nature walks to quirky conversations to meals with grandchildren. Poems marvel at grandchildren’s wisdom; in “On the Eve of June,” when a dog dies, a granddaughter tells the speaker that the pup “has just gone home— / her old one.” Foley concludes with a fantasy of leaving the “uncivil world” behind to lead a more serene life, devoted to raising grandkids and appreciating the beauty of nature with them (“Holiness”). Overall, Foley’s poems are concise and sincere. She acutely captures youngsters’ silly speech, and the works effectively evoke the speakers’ surroundings; a pushy midwife at a granddaughter’s birth, she writes, “herds us like livestock / back to our holding pen, / to lap stale coffee” (“Grandmothers”). Some readers may find the collection’s depiction of grandparenthood to be somewhat idealized, as it glosses over many of the role’s emotional and physical challenges. However, the poet repeatedly transforms quotidian moments into soulful meditations; for example, upon spotting a granddaughter’s parents greeting the toddler from a window, a speaker tells readers, “Imagine / seeing your reason for being, / framed, like a photograph, / waving and smiling at you” (“Imagine”).
A tender, insightful reflection on everyday wonders of life with grandchildren.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781956285819
Page Count: 58
Publisher: The Poetry Box
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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