In the ``Choices'' career series, brief interviews with 14 performers—e.g., a juggler, comedian, actor, dancer, and model. Also included: a congressman, pastor, teacher, and lawyer. Each describes how he or she got started and what the job entails, personal feelings about the work, and what young people considering the career should know. Men, women, and various races are represented. This will serve as a starting point for some unusual careers, but for the most part the interviews are too brief to give the reader information of any substance. Also, the books suggested for further reading are seriously outdated: a 1969 copyright for a book on teaching; 1964 for careers in music. List of organizations to write for more information. The glossary-index is of little use. (Nonfiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1992
ISBN: 1-56294-158-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre.
Survival camp? How can you not have bad feelings about that?
Sixteen-year-old nerd (or geek, but not dork) Henry Lambert has no desire to go to Strongwoods Survival Camp. His father thinks it might help Henry man up and free him of some of his odd phobias. Randy, Henry’s best friend since kindergarten, is excited at the prospect of going thanks to the camp’s promotional YouTube video, so Henry relents. When they arrive at the shabby camp in the middle of nowhere and meet the possibly insane counselor (and only staff member), Max, Henry’s bad feelings multiply. Max tries to train his five campers with a combination of carrot and stick, but the boys are not athletes, let alone survivalists. When a trio of gangsters drops in on the camp Games to try to collect the debt owed by the owner, the boys suddenly have to put their skills to the test. Too bad they don’t have any—at all. Strand’s summer-camp farce is peopled with sarcastic losers who’re chatty and wry. It’s often funny, and the gags turn in unexpected directions and would do Saturday Night Live skits proud. However, the story’s flow is hampered by an unnecessary and completely unfunny frame that takes place during the premier of the movie the boys make of their experience. The repeated intrusions bring the narrative to a screeching halt.
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8455-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brief discussion of the development and persistence of gender roles acts as an introduction to this excellent overview of what it has meant to be a girl in this country, from pre-colonial times to the present. Colman (Rosie the Riveter, 1995, etc.) never resorts to a generic ideal or tells the story as if she is speaking of an “everygirl”; instead, she allows a narrative to emerge from the histories and words of real people, from every social, ethnic, and economic level in the US. Some of the subjects and speakers are well-known, others are not (although they probably ought to be), but all are interesting and inspiring. Alice Greenough, daughter of “Packsaddle Ben” Greenough, grew up in the turn-of-the- century Montana wilderness where she did all the things her brothers did; Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a young black woman, worked with Elizabeth Van Lew, a middle-aged white woman, as spies for the Union army; Lilac Chen, a former prostitute in 19th- century San Francisco, tells how her own father sold her into slavery in China when she was only 6; and Yvonne “Eve” Blue, an obviously anorexic 14-year-old, maintained her gaunt frame by limiting herself to 140 calories a day—in 1926. These and dozens of other fascinating people offer more insight into gender roles better than any history text or sociological treatise, in lively writing that is greatly enhanced by page after page of black-and-white photographs, an extensive list of further reading, and a good index. A must-have for most collections. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-590-37129-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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