Bryant (ed., Sins of the Fathers, 1997, etc.) comes up with a few standouts, but this is mostly thin fare. Players of...
Factoids of varying quality—some a page long, others a sentence (“Toulouse-Lautrec kept a male canary called Lolo”)—best consumed as a literary snack over a few days.
Of the categories of owners (literary, royal, political, military, etc.), writers are the ones—perhaps because they wrote about them—whose pets are the most fully realized. There’s Taki, the cat Raymond Chandler called his secretary because she was always there, sitting on his papers. Alexander Dumas’s cat, Mysouff, once ate all the rare birds in the house with the help of the family’s three tame monkeys (each named after a literary critic). Dumas wrote: “Mysouff was declared guilty, but with extenuating circumstances—merely condemned to five years of incarceration with the apes.” Mark Twain, whose daughter once observed, “the difference between Mamma and Papa is that Mamma loves morals and Papa loves cats,” described a kitten that liked to sit in a corner pocket of the billiard table and “[watch] the game.” The poet William Cowper, who wrote “An Epitaph on a Hare,” had three of those animals, which he brought into his parlor after supper to play. Royalty mostly favored dogs—George VI was responsible for introducing the now ubiquitous Welsh corgi, although Queen Victoria also had favorite horses and cats, and Frederick the Great of Prussia so loved his dogs that he wished to be buried with them, a wish granted only in 1991, after Germany’s reunification. American presidents have tended to prefer a range of pets: James Garfield had a mare called Kit and a dog named Veto; Benjamin Harrison, a billy goat called Old Whiskers; and Calvin Coolidge two raccoons, Rebecca and Horace. The parrot of the title was taught by Casanova to make slanderous comments in public about a former mistress of his master.
Bryant (ed., Sins of the Fathers, 1997, etc.) comes up with a few standouts, but this is mostly thin fare. Players of Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, etc., will enjoy.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7867-1092-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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