Illustrates a place of peace or, at the very least, tranquil reflection.
The author uses the simple rhyme and meter of children’s poetry to answer questions only an adult would ask, and she highlights it with her original artwork.
Heydlauff’s (Selling Your Home with a Competitive Edge, 2011) poetry has the gentle, repetitive rhymes and rhythms of a children’s book: “Where do we begin, how do we start, / is this the way we go? // Should we go anywhere, should we go somewhere, / is this the way we go?” Her words could be song lyrics, but instead, the poems, along with a single paragraph of prose on each facing page, topped with a fluid, original painting, sketch a road map that parallels the author’s own journey from high-stress CEO to a life of peace. “Does your level of GROWTH, CALM and PEACE seem tiny at times? ACKNOWLEDGE each no matter how small and continue on your journey,” she writes. Some self-help authors come across as pretentious or strident, but Heydlauff is neither. She simply shares her experience instead of giving advice. The combination of prose, poetry and art allows her to convey the same message on several levels. The periodic use of all-caps emphasis works well here, giving each prose paragraph a sense of swing and rhythm, transitioning seamlessly from prose to poetry and back. The accompanying art is bright and spare, with simple titles that suggest but don’t limit. In “To Each I Give All,” the Earth dangles from a silver thread of hope, partially in the frame. In “Gifting Energy,” vibrant sparks, or maybe the rays of the sun, stream up and across the page. A subtle rainbow appears in almost every painting: clutched in a dove’s beak or reflecting in the clouds. Ultimately, Heydlauff doesn’t lecture—she leads.
Illustrates a place of peace or, at the very least, tranquil reflection.Pub Date: March 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1452569611
Page Count: 64
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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