Engaging episodes, not beyond the ken of the current generation and lit with just enough sentiment to give them a warm glow.
A second set of childhood memories from the author of Marshfield Dreams (2005)—these spun around the feeling of being an “in-betweener” in his family as eldest of eight (later nine) siblings.
Fletcher opens with an elaborate neighborhood map (“Marshfield was my Middle-earth,” he writes) and goes on in short chapters to recall the pleasures—and sometimes tribulations—of being a Boy Scout, playing marbles, joining a muddy scramble to gather a bucket full of frogs, having the house to himself for a day, getting a pocket transistor radio, and like treasured moments around age 10. Other memories, such as learning that a Sunday school acquaintance who shared his love for chocolate Necco Wafers had died and seeing his school bus driver Ruben Gonsalves silently watch his son get slapped (wondering since if the 1964 incident would have even happened in his “white town…but for the color of their skin”), spark more complex responses. In an epilogue he tallies other less halcyon memories, capped by the later death of a brother covered in greater detail in the previous volume. Still, like the mock funeral his friends gave him when he and his family moved away from Marshfield, readers will find these reminiscences “sad, funny, a little weird, and very sweet.”
Engaging episodes, not beyond the ken of the current generation and lit with just enough sentiment to give them a warm glow. (Memoir. 9-11)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62779-524-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Refreshingly unpredictable, if remarkably sloppy, opinionated, and a chancy choice for role models.
A diverse gallery of record breakers, envelope pushers, and activists, prominent or otherwise.
Journalist Megdal offers figures from, mostly, the present or recent past, each born in or at least loosely associated with a particular state. His selections show a distinct slant toward leftist reformers or people involved in social or environmental causes. Some, notably Muhammad Ali (Kentucky), Rachel Carson (Pennsylvania), and Jackie Robinson (Georgia), are necessary fixtures on any such roster, but many—for example, Joe Biden (Delaware), Social Democrat Michael Harrington (Missouri), and the All-American Red Heads (Arkansas), an early women’s basketball team—seem more personal choices. No small number are just odd, such as William Allen White, a Kansas newspaper publisher billed as “the figure small town America needs today,” and Marjorie van Vliet (Rhode Island), who tried to fly to all the lower 48 state capitols for peace in 1990 but died in a crash before reaching the final one. The trailblazers are presented on hard-to-parse spreads composed of kaleidoscopically contrasting color blocks, each containing a few lines of narrative, a quote, or a stylized illustration done in a flat, serigraphic style. Along with occasional snort-inducing errors (though none so hilarious as a map with LBJ’s home state, Texas, labeled “Michigan”), a quirky company of achievers that includes 22 figures of Latinx, Native, or African American descent, and, counting the Red Heads, more women than men, will greet readers willing to stay the course. Shorter profiles of 16 more luminaries at the end expand the roster.
Refreshingly unpredictable, if remarkably sloppy, opinionated, and a chancy choice for role models. (index) (Collective biography. 9-11)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78603-967-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Late, lubberly, unlikely to survive fitter treatments.
Long retraces the courses of both Darwin’s voyage aboard the Beagle and the growth of his epochal insight into evolution’s driving mechanism.
Trailing a flotilla of publications over the past decade celebrating the 200th anniversary of the naturalist’s birth and the 150th of his magnum opus, this unexceptional account sails a course that has been more ably navigated—most recently, for example, in Fabien Grolleau’s graphic Darwin: Voyage of the Beagle (2019) and annotated, illustrated adaptations of On the Origin of Species by Rebecca Stefoff (2018) and Sabina Radeva (2019). Notable here is how the influential role that John Edmonstone, a formerly enslaved taxidermist from Guyana, played in shaping the young Darwin’s interests and skills is highlighted in both the narrative and with a full-page portrait by Kalda (who also adds staid views of modern students of various ethnicities, including one wearing a hijab, into the closing summary). Many other important predecessors and colleagues are relegated to an appendix, however. The author also tries to sail too close to the wind with blanket claims that before Darwin scientists reckoned Earth’s age in just thousands of years (not all of them) and that Origin actually kicked off the “long-running battle between science and religion” (Galileo, among others, might disagree). Stick with more seaworthy vessels.
Late, lubberly, unlikely to survive fitter treatments. (glossary, timeline) (Illustrated biography. 9-11)Pub Date: July 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4968-4
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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