A compendium of compassion by can-do kids who encourage others to share some love.
Kids talk about how they’ve helped others in a children’s book by author Nick Katsoris’s Loukoumi Make a Difference Foundation in partnership with the creators of the Broadway musical Come From Away.
Mr. Rogers gave sage advice that David Hein and Irene Sankoff, the creators of Come From Away, quote in their foreword to this book for roughly ages 8 and up: “Look for the helpers.” That tip catches the spirit of this collection of brief first-person reports from 75 children and teens, each shown in a color photo. “These young leaders teach by example and remind us all that we have the power to better our communities and make a real difference,” Hein and Sankoff say. A notable example is Adelyn Brazil of Crown Point, Indiana, who, at the age of 7, launched a campaign to raise funds to erect Little Free Library boxes throughout her town. Another contributor is New Yorker Michael Colombos, who has traveled overseas to deliver supplies to orphanages in Aegio, Greece. His reward was “making a difference in the lives of these children as much as they are making a difference by being a part of mine!” Several of the projects described here have expanded significantly, including Ruby Kate Chitsey’s “Three Wishes for Ruby’s Residents” program. At first, Ruby aimed to fill three wishes for nursing home residents in Arkansas (“they always asked for simple items like snacks, clothes that fit, or food”), but her work led to the formation of a nonprofit organization that has raised more than $250,000 and has plans for chapters in other states. In her entry, Julia Katsoris (whose projects have included raking leaves in Astoria Park in Queens, New York) expresses a common theme: “When you put your mind to something, you can accomplish anything.” School and religious or other groups may find children’s stories to be a good source of ideas for projects, though a lengthy section profiling recipients of the Loukoumi Dream Day Contest winners may strike some readers as excessive self-promotion by a sponsor of this book.
A compendium of compassion by can-do kids who encourage others to share some love.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948181-70-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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