by Mike Barnes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2018
A book that tells the reader that you are not alone, whoever you are.
A meditation on how each Alzheimer’s patient is a unique individual, though the stages through which they pass and the toll that these take on everyone involved is nearly universal.
A Canadian poet, novelist (The Adjustment League, 2016), and memoirist, Barnes explains that he is “sending you the news I needed to hear myself” in coming to terms with the Alzheimer’s that his 91-year-old mother, Mary, has been battling for eight years. The particulars of Mary’s dementia give this brief book universal appeal. The author effectively humanizes himself as a man who has made errors, who wishes he had done things differently, and who has his own psychological burdens to bear. “How many persons with dementia are in the room?” he asks. “Sleeping so little, keeping so much in your head, your thoughts are often confused and scattered….You are isolated. You’ve stopped seeing friends. They know nothing of this life, and you know nothing else. Your pastimes together are just that: past times.” Yet this is by no means a book of complaint, or even one about loss, as Barnes stresses how much he has learned from the experience—about Mary and about himself and “of some of the wholly unexpected riches Mary found in the cave of dementia. How she brought them out to glitter in the sun.” There is a rich backstory to which this elliptical account hints: Mary’s Depression-era upbringing, her long marriage and recent widowhood, the violence of the outbursts she can no longer control, and her tenuous hold on identity, both her own and anyone else’s. “Are you my father? she would ask. My brother? My husband? My grandfather?” writes her son. “My age went wheeling around along with my name.” Yet Barnes and his mother sustain a solid relationship and find moments of grace.
A book that tells the reader that you are not alone, whoever you are.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77196-243-8
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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by Pamela Paul & Maria Russo ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino & Lisk Feng & Vera Brosgol & Monica Garwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.
Savvy counsel and starter lists for fretting parents.
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, 2017, etc.) and Russo, the children’s book editor for that publication, provide standard-issue but deftly noninvasive strategies for making books and reading integral elements in children’s lives. Some of it is easier said than done, but all is intended to promote “the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading” for pleasure. Mediumwise, print reigns supreme, with mild approval for audio and video books but discouraging words about reading apps and the hazards of children becoming “slaves to the screen.” In a series of chapters keyed to stages of childhood, infancy to the teen years, the authors supplement their advice with short lists of developmentally appropriate titles—by their lights, anyway: Ellen Raskin’s Westing Game on a list for teens?—all kitted out with enticing annotations. The authors enlarge their offerings with thematic lists, from “Books That Made Us Laugh” to “Historical Fiction.” In each set, the authors go for a mix of recent and perennially popular favorites, leaving off mention of publication dates so that hoary classics like Janice May Udry’s A Tree Is Nice seem as fresh as David Wiesner’s Flotsam and Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak? and sidestepping controversial titles and themes in the sections for younger and middle-grade readers—with a few exceptions, such as a cautionary note that some grown-ups see “relentless overparenting” in Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series doesn’t make the cut except for a passing reference to its “troubling treatment of Indians.” The teen lists tend to be edgier, salted with the provocative likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a nod to current demands for more LGBTQ and other #ownvoices books casts at least a glance beyond the mainstream. Yaccarino leads a quartet of illustrators who supplement the occasional book cover thumbnails with vignettes and larger views of children happily absorbed in reading.
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0530-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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by Larry L. Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2005
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of...
A 70-something reflects on becoming the father of his sixth child at age 59.
Meyer fathered three sons during the Vietnam War era while married to his first wife. A journalism professor at California State University-Long Beach, he entered a second marriage to a student 27 years his junior, fathering two daughters and a son. After much agonizing about balancing career and family, Meyer took early retirement from his teaching to become a parent and a home-based freelance writer. Before his retirement, the first batch of his diary-like entries became a book, 1989's My Summer With Molly: The Journal of a Second Generation Father. After retirement, he became a regular journal-writer, musing about parenting and dozens of related threads. Just as Molly dominated the first collection of entries, son Franz dominates the second collection. At turns doctrinaire, old fuddy-duddy, self-deprecating, melancholy, humorous, even hip, Meyer is a thoughtful guide through daily life. The seemingly oblique title becomes clear in the context of the W.B. Yeats' quotation from which it is derived: "An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress..." Meyer sounds ageist at times, but throughout, he is determined to fight his own aging and to serve as a good husband and father. Eschewing sentimentality much of the time, Meyer can't help occasionally lapsing into teary-eyed territory. He concludes that "geezer fatherdom" is worth the costs, that "in the end, there is only love, active and remembered, to warm the chill of a cooling universe."
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of all ages.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-942273-05-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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