Affecting, insightful, and informative account of a lovely service dog and her handler.
Short but powerful story for older middle-grade readers about a service dog and her handler by educator and coiner of the term “faction” (fiction based on fact) Ward (Letters Home, 2004).
On her second birthday, yellow Labrador retriever Maddie was awarded to Tom Ward, a Marine Corps veteran with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Trained as a service dog since she was 5 weeks old, Maddie spent an additional two weeks training with Tom before they traveled to his home in North Carolina. The story details the ways Maddie assists Tom—opening the kitchen drawers and refrigerator, picking up things he has dropped, sensing when he is tired or cold, etc.—while also providing guidelines for young children on how to behave around a service dog. Through photographs and text (sometimes told from Maddie’s point of view), the reader learns that a service dog should never be approached or touched when working with a handler unless the handler gives permission. Some information on the progression of ALS also emerges in the story. As fitting for a children’s book, the story not only shows how Maddie helps Tom, but provides a glimpse into their life together—going to the beach, dining out, playing ball, and having a late afternoon snack. The author—Tom’s spouse—also provides information on the service organization that provided them with Maddie as well as other useful links. While the text is well-written and provides important, heartfelt information, the photographs elevate this work. More than words possibly could, they convey the close relationship shared by Tom and Maddie. In addition, seeing Maddie in action clarifies how she provides various services to Tom. The only way the book falters is in Maddie’s canine commentary, which might amuse kids but jar an adult reader.
Affecting, insightful, and informative account of a lovely service dog and her handler.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-72960-1
Page Count: 62
Publisher: MHW Creative Works
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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