A vivid, eye-opening, and unsettling look at a young steer.
A debut nonfiction book explores the life of a grass-fed steer.
As Carter writes in her brief work, “Even though most of us eat meat daily, many people have no idea how meat is raised.” In these pages, she provides a pictorial record of the short life of Lima Bean, a steer calf who came to Snug Valley Farm in northern Vermont and entered the livestock herd of farmers Nancy and Helm Nottermann, along with their son, Ben, and his wife, Kelly. The Nottermanns looked after “grass-fed beef” on their farm, “continuing the tradition of caring about the animals they raise and being thoughtful stewards of their land.” In the book’s dozens of color photographs by Carter, readers see Lima Bean from the very moment of his birth, through his first tottering steps at Snug Valley, to his introductions to the other cows. The work follows him through his growing years, when he gained as much as two pounds a day. Typically, steer calves are killed almost immediately, since they can’t produce milk for dairy farmers. But the Nottermanns take in some of these calves and give them two more years of life by raising them for beef. Through a simple narration and plenty of vibrant pictures, Carter gives her readers an intimate look at a world they would never otherwise see. And despite her warm and humane narrative tone, some readers will likely be saddened or even repulsed by the fact that Lima Bean, reaching magnificent adulthood and enjoying his life and the company of his friends, is going to be killed—along with his pals—and rendered into meat patties (also pictured here). The author writes passionately about the iniquities of factory farms that treat their cattle harshly, saying it’s “no longer possible” for people to ignore these cruelties. In fact, she winningly urges the audience to boycott factory-farmed meat. But perhaps she’s done a better job than she knows: The story of Lima Bean will probably turn some readers into vegans.
A vivid, eye-opening, and unsettling look at a young steer.Pub Date: July 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780989018715
Page Count: 70
Publisher: Saltwind Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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