A serious, comprehensive children’s health reference.
In this health guide, biotechnology patent attorney Fett (It Starts with the Egg, 2019, etc.) advises parents on how best to foster the development of their children’s brains.
The time to ensure the health of a baby’s brain is during pregnancy and in the first year of infancy, says the author. Modern medicine has a better understanding of this period than ever before, she notes, including what nutrients and practices will help nurture early language development, creativity, memory, and attention span, while also decreasing the chances of premature birth, autism, ADHD, and other developmental disabilities. In this book, Fett outlines how parents can create the best possible environment for brain development, from their children’s conceptions to their first birthdays. To that end, she points out what common toxins to avoid, which vitamins to take, how to keep hormones in balance, and how to ensure that a baby’s body maintains a healthy collection of microorganisms. “By the end of the book, you will have learned about many small changes that can have a big impact on the health of your child’s brain,” writes Fett in her introduction. “You will be armed with all the knowledge you need to make truly informed decisions, to give your child the best possible start in life.” Fett, the granddaughter of noted neuroscientist Paul Fatt, holds a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Sydney. She appears to feel at home in these fields, effectively elucidating complex jargon for a general audience. Readers who will soon be parents may be familiar with most of the prenatal vitamins, but they may not be aware of the dangers of the flame retardants found in some car seats, for example. The author takes a decidedly better-safe-than-sorry approach, which results in some unexpected restrictions; one chapter, for example, is titled “The Risks & Benefits of Ultrasounds.” All of her recommendations are based on recent research, however, which she documents in extensive endnotes. Although the science behind this advice continues to develop, readers seeking to give their child the best possible start will likely be interested in Fett’s regimen.
A serious, comprehensive children’s health reference.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9996761-3-4
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Franklin Fox Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
