Tame and thoughtful portraits of our friends in the wild.
A light collection of poems about animals.
In her debut book of verse, Burrelli, a former teacher of foreign languages, assembles 26 poems extolling the virtues of creatures real and imagined. Using the alphabet as a structural guide for her subjects, she offers a menagerie of beasts, ranging from the kingly Lion and alphabet-closing Zebra to the veritably unknown termite-like Xylophage and unsavory Vulture. As the work’s title implies, the author aims to capture each creature’s essence, which she does with wit and aplomb, often with the animal speaking for itself. “Cattitude” and “Stage Fright” offer particularly captivating portrayals of the cat and rooster, respectively. The cat observes, “I find it suitable, / To be inscrutable,” a sentiment exemplified by felines the world over. In “Stage Fright,” the rooster reveals that his crowing not only heralds the break of day but, in fact, causes it: “I summon the sun and make him rise!” He then admits his deep fear that one morning the sun may ignore his plea: “My entire reputation is at stake, / If the incantation that I make, / Doesn’t cause the day to break.” This touching insight also provides an entertaining example of personification, with which Burrelli experiments throughout the text. Though the poems, accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings by the author, are generally cute and comprehensible (at times, even vaguely recalling James Thurber), the prosody could be much tighter, with meter often sacrificed in the service of forced rhyme. Young listeners, however, aren’t likely to care, and adult animal lovers may overlook the stylistic shortcomings in the face of the endearing content.
Tame and thoughtful portraits of our friends in the wild.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-595-37023-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A three-time Newbery Honor winner tells—in a memoir that is even more immediate and compelling than his novels—about his intimate relationship with Minnesota's north woods and the dog team he trained for Alaska's Iditarod.
Beginning with a violent natural incident (a doe killed by wolves) that spurred his own conversion from hunter and trapper to observing habitant of the forest, Paulsen draws a vivid picture of his wilderness life—where bears routinely help themselves to his dog's food and where his fiercely protective bantam adopts a nestful of quail chicks and then terrorizes the household for an entire summer. The incidents he recounts are marvelous. Built of concrete detail, often with a subtext of irony or mystery, they unite in a modest but telling self-portrait of a man who has learned by opening himself to nature—not to idyllic, sentimental nature, but to the harsh, bloody, life-giving real thing. Like nature, the dogs are uncontrollable: independent, wildly individual, yet loyal and dedicated to their task. It takes extraordinary flexibility, courage, and generosity to accept their difficult strengths and make them a team: Paulsen sees humor in their mischief and has learned (almost at the cost of his life) that rigid discipline is irrelevant, even dangerous. This wonderful book concludes with a mesmerizing, day-by-day account of Paulsen's first Iditarod—a thrilling, dangerous journey he was so reluctant to end that he almost turned back within sight of his goal. lt's almost as hard to come to the end of his journal.
This may be Paulsen's best book yet: it should delight and enthrall almost any reader.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-02-770221-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1990
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