Indian folk art triumphantly meets 17th-century English trick verse in this sophisticated graphic venture fit for middle...
Creative worlds collude and collide in this contemporary rendering of a well-known 17th-century English poem.
Seldom does a book review address a book’s design, but in this visual stunner from publisher Tara, the literal setting of the words is as key to the volume’s success as are its text and illustrations. Urveti, an acclaimed artist from Madhya Pradesh in central India, chooses for his subject an oft-anthologized anonymous circa-1665 “trick” poem, depicting the wily text with ravishingly detailed black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings in a style typical of Gond tribal art. The other third of this global collaboration is Brazilian designer Yamakami’s exquisitely thoughtful setting of the 12-line poem, which highlights the reflexivity of the six couplets. The meanings of these couplets can be gleaned reading each line with the rhyme from beginning to end, or—the tricky part—against it, from the middle of one line to the middle of the next. Take, for example, the poem’s opening: “I saw a peacock with a fiery tail / I saw a blazing comet drop down hail / I saw a cloud….” Through the use of intricate die cuts, Yamakami subtly leads readers from a spread featuring a plumped-up peacock to the image of a comet with its “fiery tail” of metaphorical “hail,” then to a cloud dropping the more literal icy phenomenon. These careful cuts draw readers through the work from cover to cover, brilliantly underscoring both the poem’s dizzying, dreamlike essence and its thematic obsession with the subjective nature of seeing.
Indian folk art triumphantly meets 17th-century English trick verse in this sophisticated graphic venture fit for middle graders on up. (Picture book/poetry. 10 & up)Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-93-80340-14-2
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Tara Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity.
A low-wattage collection of original stories and poems, as unmemorable as it is unappealingly titled.
The collection was inspired by a perceived paucity of short science fiction for teen readers, and its production costs were covered by a Kickstarter campaign. The editors gather a dozen poems and 21 stories from a stable of contributors who, after headliners Jack McDevitt and Nancy Holder, will be largely unknown even to widely read fans of the genre. The tales place their characters aboard spacecraft or space stations, on other worlds or in future dystopias, but only rarely do the writers capture a credibly adolescent voice or sensibility. Standouts in this department are the Heinlein-esque “The Stars Beneath Our Feet,” by Stephen D. Covey & Sandra McDonald, about a first date/joyride in space gone wrong, and Camille Alexa’s portrait of a teen traumatized by a cyberspace assault (“Over It”). Along with a few attempts to craft futuristic slang, only Lavie Tidhar’s fragmentary tale of Tel Aviv invaded by successive waves of aliens, doppelgangers, zombies and carnivorous plants (“The Myriad Dangers”) effectively lightens the overall earnest tone. Aside from fictional aliens and modified humans, occasional references to dark skin (“Out of the Silent Sea,” Dale Lucas) are the only signs of ethnic diversity. Most of the free-verse poetry makes only oblique, at best, references to science-fictional themes.
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity. (author bios) (Science fiction/short stories. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9847824-0-8
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Underwords
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
An engaging, over-the-top tale with much to say about how schools treat individuals and outsiders.
In the opener of the Tribe trilogy, Spencer Pendleton welcomes the chance to start anew at Greenfield Middle School.
It’s an “overblown rumor” that he burned down his old school. Most of the school is still standing, minus a couple of classrooms. Now, though, he hopes to stay on the straight and narrow, with the help of his inhaler and latest meds. But on Day 1, he has his first confrontation with bully Riley Callahan and his Cro-Magnon cronies. On Day 2, Riley sends Spencer toilet diving. Then Spencer almost gouges out his teacher’s eye with a pencil, is involved in a cafeteria food fight and has a chat with the assistant principal. When he’s recruited by the Tribe, a mysterious “underground ring of runaways” hiding out in the school, he might have found a way to survive. But, though the Tribe is more than capable of doing battle with school bullies, Spencer realizes they’re a tyrannical clique in their own way, and he’s too independent-minded to be a loyal follower. He will have to find his own way to survive. The first-person narration effectively conveys Spencer’s internal struggles, and the clever “Ghost Stories” interspersed toward the end of the volume offer fascinating back stories for the Tribe’s members.
An engaging, over-the-top tale with much to say about how schools treat individuals and outsiders. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5221-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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