Psychotherapist Koplow (Where Rag Dolls Hide Their Faces, 1990), director of the Karen Horney Therapeutic Nursery in N.Y.C., has much to say about children who need to build safe homes within themselves to make up for a society deficient in both housing and safety. She also tells entirely too much about her own needs, stress, and vacations. The kindergarten children in a therapeutic group at a Bronx mental-health center are frightened at Christmastime: The idea of Santa Claus sparks fears of a blood-red man who can get into their apartments despite security buzzers and locked doors. That's just one of the surprising and heartbreaking moments in Koplow's account. Homeless subway-dweller Opal (who, from her crib, witnessed her own mother's murder) and her three-year-old daughter Qimmy seem mutually devoted—but to live together, they need more than an apartment: Opal, who loves caring for sedentary ``little babies,'' says that she can't ``take care of no walking babies.'' To her credit, Koplow tries to show how the realities of urban life create problems for middle- and upper-income children as well. A 14-year-old Jewish honor-student, for example—a private patient of Koplow's named Ronnie—becomes too psychosomatically ill to attend school. But the link here to urban decay is not convincing: Though Ronnie is frightened by homeless women on the subway, the real issue dates back to family memories of the Holocaust and her mother's suicidal breakdown. And Koplow rather annoyingly includes her own steps toward a desired home: e.g., vacationing at a singles' resort in Jamaica where she ``wore a black flowered outfit with colored glass buttons and sat at a piano bar drinking Kahl£a and cream,'' or, over Chinese food, commiserating about being single with her also-unmarried brother. When Koplow focuses on the children, she is partisan, compassionate, and informed.
Pub Date: Dec. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93517-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
