Foolproof material, illustrated with snapshots proving Elijah’s cuteness.
A rock-’n’-roll writer becomes a father and finds it wonderful.
Pollack (Never Mind the Pollacks, 2003, etc.) was a hip single guy working the rock scene. Then he found fetching, quirky Regina from Nashville. She was the woman he was looking for, “a smart, confident, talented, patient, bossy, good-looking Southern nerd.” So he married her. Soon, with the combined application of scientific method and the tried-and-true old-fashioned way, they made a baby. The proud daddy describes, perhaps in more detail than necessary, the birth of Elijah (9 lb, 10 oz), the best child ever. We learn of doulas and birthing techniques, obstetricians, grandparents, baby showers and, of course, the yeas and nays of circumcision (“Peeniegate”). There are narratives about schooling choices, butt rashes, applesauce, Elijah’s attempts at walking and talking and his penchant for blood-drawing biting. The little nuclear family moves from Chicago to Philly to Austin (where there are neighborhood problems) and, as of last report, to L.A. Pollack’s journal includes an excursus now and again regarding such matters as road trips with a band, his wife’s anatomy and the salubrious effects of getting stoned on good grass. Elijah is now four, Dad is 36 and they are both growing up nicely. God job, Neal! Someday, Elijah will especially enjoy this history, and meanwhile, we can look forward to his Bar Mitzvah.
Foolproof material, illustrated with snapshots proving Elijah’s cuteness.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2007
ISBN: 0-375-42362-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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