MY PARENTS STILL LOVE ME EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE GETTING DIVORCED

Name: MY PARENTS STILL LOVE ME EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE GETTING DIVORCED
Author: Lois V. Nightingale
ISBN: 978-1-889755-01-4

by Lois V. Nightingale ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A broad-minded and engaging activity book to help children work out their feelings.

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An interactive workbook designed to help kids deal with separation and divorce.

This volume from Nightingale (Building Resiliency, 2018) draws on her experience as a psychologist and family therapist. She offers a series of illustrated exercises that aim to help children of separation and divorce work through various aspects of chaotic events in their lives. They’re peppered with affirmations, such as “It’s okay to keep on loving both your parents” and “Do you know that crying can sometimes make grownups feel better, too?” It presents a kid-friendly frame story in which a beautiful mermaid and a strong knight fall in love and have four children: Constance, Arletta, Newton, and Spartacus. After a while, tensions grow when the mermaid wants to return to the sea and the knight wants to stay on land: “everything seemed to upset both of them, and they complained about each other,” Nightingale writes. The book offers a series of scenarios involving each child as they experience their parents’ split, and this narrative device allows the author to effectively explore different reactions, including withdrawal, moodiness, anger, and resentment. Each section offers discussion questions (such as “Newton wondered WHY about many parts of his parents’ divorce….What things have you wondered WHY about?”) and pages of exercises (such as “Draw a picture of something special at your mom’s house”). Nightingale’s experience and empathy make the book invaluable for parents who may have read adult books about divorce—including, possibly, the author’s own—but want a similar resource for their kids. The author’s decision to create four fictional children, instead of one, is wise, as well, as it increases the likelihood that a child will find someone relatable in these pages.

A broad-minded and engaging activity book to help children work out their feelings.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-889755-01-4

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Nightingale Rose Publications

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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LIFE IS SO GOOD

by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000

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The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-50396-X

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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ESSAYS AFTER EIGHTY

by Donald Hall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 2014

That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.”...

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The writing life at age 85.

In this collection of 14 autobiographical essays, former U.S. Poet Laureate Hall (Christmas at Eagle Pond, 2012, etc.) reflects on aging, death, the craft of writing and his beloved landscape of New Hampshire. Debilitated by health problems that have affected his balance and ability to walk, the author sees his life physically compromised, and “the days have narrowed as they must. I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.” He waits for the mail; a physical therapist visits twice a week; and an assistant patiently attends to typing, computer searches and money matters. “In the past I was often advised to live in the moment,” he recalls. “Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy….” Happily, he is still able to write, although not poetry. “As I grew older,” he writes, “poetry abandoned me….For a male poet, imagination and tongue-sweetness require a blast of hormones.” Writing in longhand, Hall revels in revising, a process that can entail more than 80 drafts. “Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.” These essays circle back on a few memories: the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, which sent him into the depths of grief; childhood recollections of his visits to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, where he helped his grandfather with haying; grateful portraits of the four women who tend to him: his physical therapist, assistant, housekeeper and companion; and giving up tenure “for forty joyous years of freelance writing.”

That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.” For the author, writing has been, and continues to be, his passionate revenge against diminishing.