A bland offering next to the many more compelling guides available.
General advice for doing good on personal and local levels.
Following on her Simple Acts: The Busy Family’s Guide to Giving Back (2019), Silverstein proposes a limited program of “intentional acts of kindness and service, sprinkled throughout your busy everyday life,” geared to privileged teens. Along with an emphasis on collection drives to address a broad range of social needs, the author tallies fundraising ideas from bake sales to dance marathons without substantive practical tips on setting them up and perfunctorily recognizes that, yes, some young people don’t have much free time because financial necessity means they actually have to work, while promoting the value of community service as a way of raising social consciousness and doing good. She suggests turning birthdays and other celebrations into fundraisers (or…collection drives), argues that readers can “blast positive messages that can silence the perpetrator” of cyberbullying and online hate, and promotes head-shaving in support of children in chemo as a “Stretch Idea.” The text largely assumes that readers will benevolently give to others (advising that readers can establish a school diversity and inclusion board and “use this platform to give any marginalized individuals or groups a safe place to share experiences”), setting up an us-vs.-them framework (“We need to remember that we will all be in need of help one day”). Black-and-white spot art shows racially diverse human figures.
A bland offering next to the many more compelling guides available. (resources, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63198-626-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A serviceable account of a tough job for tough-minded people—rewarding but with a heavy load of responsibility.
An agent who stood (as his 2014 memoir puts it) Within Arm’s Length of three presidents offers a pared-down version of his training and career.
Emmett reduces mention of family and domestic life to passing mentions, covers a post-retirement stint in the CIA in a few sketchy pages, and leaves out entirely the ax-grinding complaints about officious superiors and “politically correct” policies and practices that set the tone in his original account. What’s left is a stiff but not entirely humorless recounting of how he achieved his ambition to become a Secret Service agent—sparked in grade school by JFK’s assassination—after a tour of duty in the Marines. He then made his way up from investigating check fraud and counterfeiting (the Secret Service’s original raison d’être) to join the Presidential Protective Division to work both “shift” assignments and on more heavily armed Counter Assault Teams during the Bush and Clinton administrations. “Sometimes people think Secret Service agents are cold-blooded, steely-eyed bodyguards with large biceps and dark glasses,” he writes. But “real Secret Service agents do not wear sunglasses indoors.” As to the rest, readers can judge for themselves from his experiences and expressed attitudes. He closes with career-prep advice and a timeline that includes presidential assassinations, both attempted and successful, through 2009.
A serviceable account of a tough job for tough-minded people—rewarding but with a heavy load of responsibility. (Memoir. 12-15)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-13030-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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