An educational and fanciful journey through classic stories.
Glinton-Meicholas (Chasing Light, 2013, etc.) offers a culturally rich collection of Bahamian folk tales.
The Bahamas boasts a time-honored tradition of storytelling, and it’s through such short, fantastical tales that many children learn the importance of good manners, humility, respect for elders, the consequences of greed, and the gift of love. In this treasury, Glinton-Meicholas focuses on “the ol’ story,” or the traditional characters and motifs of her birthplace, Cat Island, also known as Guanima. These folk tales feature brief musical interludes or “sings,” often used to announce a main character or plot twist, to heighten tension, or to serve as call and response between characters. The players therein are often manifestations of good or evil, intelligence or stupidity, power or weakness. Beneficent behavior is rewarded, and bad behavior is punished; disobedience and selfishness are particularly called out—from the lazy Bouki, who bails on the responsibilities of cow ownership but hoards milk and meat, to a drummer’s son whose urgent need to play the instrument lands him in a dangerous competition with a witch. The author imparts valuable moral lessons through the experiences of tricksters and animals, as in a spiritual parable about the dangers of comparison in “Why the Serpent Has a Cleft Tongue and Crawls on His Belly.” The author carefully explains cultural references in footnotes, such as the meaning of a “fire half” (a hearth) or a “kukumakai” (a magic stick). Throughout, her poetic language evokes powerful visuals: she describes a carriage as “blacker than the heart of a hurricane,” a woman’s skin as “the colour of honey from bees feeding on wild marigolds,” teeth that “sparkled like sea-washed pebbles,” and a dancing couple “as beautiful as a pair of golden banana birds.” The Bahamian lexicon can be challenging to decipher, though; phrases such as “Borry dis, gimme dat! Das all you an’ yuh pa know!” may slow down the reading process.
An educational and fanciful journey through classic stories.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 159
Publisher: Guanima Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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