An attractive blend of fairy-tale elements with self-esteem encouragement.
Told in rhyming verse, this illustrated book for kids ages 1 to 7 tells the tale of a princess with magical hair who is cursed by an unhappy troll.
A wise king and beautiful queen have a daughter they name Princess Marie Antoinette. She’s a perfect sweetheart with one noticeable difference from other babies: “The princess’s hair was magic— / the real fairy-tale stuff.” It changes color throughout the day, and though the colors are pretty, the princess’s parents are worried. A doctor prescribes “cough syrup and leeches” and warns that if Marie’s hair is cut, “she might stop being herself.” The baby’s fairy godmother arrives to reassure them that “the princess’s hair is a different affair / that comes from the magic realm.” To protect his daughter, the king declares her hair a national treasure, never to be cut. As Marie grows up, her hair grows longer and longer, heavier and heavier, until she needs help carrying it from “Six maids, five servants, / a kitchen helper, butler, and caddie, / the teacher and his silly pet, / a young page, and poor choir lady.” When a talented new court hairstylist arrives, the princess gains more freedom to move about and goes to school, where her magical hair amuses other students by changing color and dispensing butterflies and treats. Marie’s hair is cursed by a bitter, gloomy troll with a grudge, but her kindness finds a way to reach him. Mammonek (Escape From Cat City, 2018) tells a fanciful story bolstered by some serious undercurrents. Readers will likely enjoy the fun of all the ways Marie’s hair behaves and misbehaves and the various attempts to contain it. At the same time, the book includes messages about good self-care and the necessity of living in the real world, not in dreams. The rhyming verse usually works well, although the scansion can be off. Mammonek’s illustrations are a charming collage of photos and digital artwork in confectionary colors set against backdrops of swirls, butterflies, and other images.
An attractive blend of fairy-tale elements with self-esteem encouragement.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4907-6
Page Count: 136
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...
Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.
The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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