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SENSATIONAL TV

TRASH OR JOURNALISM?

Day (Animal Experimentation, 1994, not reviewed, etc.) offers readers a sobering investigation into talk shows, tabloid news programs, and reality-based adventure shows and comes up with a well-meaning but superficial primer in the Issues in Focus series. The author demonstrates the emotional wallop talk shows pack by recounting the horrifying and freakish stories that these programs frequently highlight in order to guarantee high ratings and therefore garner advertising revenues. She points out that no one—from the commercial sponsors, to the producers, to the hosts- -will assume moral responsibility for the content of the broadcasts. To her credit, Day makes the case against trash TV with a stream of facts and figures, revealing the economics of the shows (e.g., they keep the money even if one talk show guest murders another). Unfortunately, she takes the same high moral tone that she accuses the shows of having; while her defense of the Rolanda show seems to be a matter of personal taste, her belief that viewers become more critical thinkers by watching investigative news shows comes off as wishful thinking. (b&w photos, not seen, notes, index) (Nonfiction. 11+)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-89490-733-6

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Enslow

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996

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ONE CUT

From the Simon True series

This is clearly not unbiased reporting, but it makes a strong case that justice in our legal system does not always fit the...

Porinchak recounts how the legal system fails five teens who commit a serious crime.

The May 22, 1995, brawl in a white suburb of Los Angeles that resulted in the death of one teen and the injury of another is related matter-of-factly. The account of the police investigation, the judicial process, and the ultimate incarceration of the five boys is more passionately argued. Since the story focuses on the teens’ experiences following the brawl, minimal attention is given to Jimmy Farris, who died, although the testimony of Mike McLoren, who survived, is crucial. The book opens with a comprehensive dramatis personae that will help orient readers, and the text is liberally punctuated by quotes drawn from contemporary newspaper and magazine coverage as well as interviews with several of the key figures, including three of the accused. Porinchak argues that the proceedings were influenced by the high-profile 1994 trial and acquittal of the Menendez brothers, and unfounded accusations of gang involvement further clouded the matter. Despite the journalistic style, there is clear intent to elicit sympathy for the five boys involved, three of whom were sentenced to life without parole; of two, the text remarks that “they were numbers now, not humans.”

This is clearly not unbiased reporting, but it makes a strong case that justice in our legal system does not always fit the crime. (Nonfiction. 14-18)

Pub Date: May 2, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8132-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017

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ABUELA, DON'T FORGET ME

A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love.

As palliative for his beloved Abuela's worsening dementia, memoirist Ogle offers her a book of childhood recollections.

Cast in episodic rushes of free verse and paralleling events chronicled in Free Lunch (2019) and Punching Bag (2021), the poems take the author from age 4 until college in a mix of love notes to his devoted, hardworking, Mexican grandmother; gnawing memories of fights and racial and homophobic taunts at school as he gradually becomes aware of his sexuality; and bitter clashes with both his mother, described as a harsh, self-centered deadbeat with seemingly not one ounce of love to give or any other redeeming feature, and the distant White father who threw him out the instant he came out. Though overall the poems are less about the author’s grandmother than about his own angst and issues (with searing blasts of enmity reserved for his birthparents), a picture of a loving intergenerational relationship emerges, offering moments of shared times and supportive exchanges amid the raw tallies of beat downs at home, sudden moves to escape creditors, and screaming quarrels. “My memories of a wonderful woman are written in words and verses and fragments in this book,” he writes in a foreword, “unable to be unwritten. And if it is forgotten, it can always be read again.”

A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love. (Verse memoir. 13-18)

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-324-01995-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Norton Young Readers

Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022

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