Likely to become the go-to biography of these two iconic figures—for specialists, but not just those in children’s...
A thoroughgoing, if dispassionate, portrait of two relentlessly creative types whose contributions to children’s literature—epochal as they are—make up only part of the story.
While Krauss’ A Hole Is To Dig (1952) and Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) are well-known classics of children’s literature, Nel (Director, Kansas St. Univ. Program in Children’s Literature; The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity, 2002, etc.) makes sturdy cases for regarding Johnson’s comic strip Barnaby as a landmark in the history of cartoons, and Krauss as a significant creator of avant-garde poetry and theater pieces for adults in the 1960s and ’70s. Aside from shared interests in each other and in leftist politics, the two seem better defined here by their differences: He was big, quiet and bearlike, she was small and intense; he thought of himself as a cartoonist, she as primarily a writer. His most renowned published work largely reflects his own experiences and inner child; hers (for younger audiences) was inspired by observations of, and overheard remarks by, actual children. They collaborated on just four of their many dozens of books. Later in their lives, while she was making a splash in the New York cultural scene, he took to painting visual representations of mathematical and geometrical formulas—many of which are now in the Smithsonian Institution. Succumbing only occasionally to the temptation to drop tedious lists of family, friends or famous guests at various functions, Nel draws on a decade of archival research and more than 80 interviews to track their personal and professional relationships—notably with Maurice Sendak, whose career was launched with his illustrations for A Hole Is To Dig, and the entertainingly fiery editor Ursula Nordstrom—and multifaceted careers.
Likely to become the go-to biography of these two iconic figures—for specialists, but not just those in children’s literature.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61703-636-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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