A rich, vibrant glimpse into Carlos the dog’s ankle-high experience on an American holiday.
While crowds hustle and bustle on the busiest travel day of the year, an observant French bulldog named Carlos remarks on moments of kindness and beauty.
New York’s Grand Central Station is a buzzing place Thanksgiving Day. Lovers reunite, a man gives a beggar $20 in cash, triplet girls meet their grandmother, a Great Dane’s drool causes a small flood and a Seeing Eye dog maintains his focus amidst the chaos. While accompanying his mistress to meet “her sister and brother, / her sister’s beau, Scott, / and her Long Island mother” the precocious Carlos witnesses the festive bustle from ground level. After taking in the sights he asks readers not to forget the vertically challenged, reminding that even dogs can look beyond footwear to recognize the beauty in humankind: “Please try to see things / from my point of view. / Your ankles are nice but... / you’re more than a shoe.” Sullivan’s snappy rhymes are a joy to read aloud. She describes a range of diverse characters that parents will appreciate but keeps her prose playful enough to maintain the attention of the toddler set. Phrases like “Ay Caramba” and “gi-normous eyes” encourage children to have fun with language and dare them to invent words to describe vivid moments. Josephs’ bold and vivacious illustrations match the narrative. Throngs of people, mostly ankles, mill within New York’s center of transportation in deep hues of red, blue, yellow and green. The city is present on each page through glimpses of geographic and social landmarks: Coney Island, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the Mets and F.A.O. Schwartz.
A rich, vibrant glimpse into Carlos the dog’s ankle-high experience on an American holiday.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9820381-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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