One wonderful Dalmatian.
Daisy, a headstrong Dalmatian, refuses to do her chores and eat her broccoli–only to learn that daily work plus helpings of veggies is the means to her dreams.
With colorful, whimsical illustrations, Lee introduces a young dog Daisy, who declares “No, Never!” whenever she’s faced with the not-so-fun aspects of life. Whether it’s doing homework or dishes, taking a bath or taking out the trash, cleaning or eating greens, the delightfully spotted pooch always protests. While many parents might take a hard line with such a stubborn daughter, Daisy’s loving mom goes the patient road, asking what exactly Daisy might like to do instead. This pup thinks big indeed, offering up such alternatives as writing the best book of all time and winning the “Tour-de-Daisy” (page bicycle tournament. This is all fine and good, but Daisy’s mom sagely points out that she must “take care of the goals that are important now in order to learn how to take care of the goals that are important later.” This spurs Daisy to start viewing such necessities as bathing and munching carrots in a positive light–and to change her belligerent behavior. The book contains a strong moral tale without any clichés and engaging pictures that are worth 1,000 words and then some. While the writing can be a bit wordy and are sometimes outshined by the illustrations, this is a minor complaint. Much modern-day kids’ fare preaches rather than listens. Just the fact that the pup’s mom inquires about Daisy’s goals and listens to the response–rather than merely telling her to be quiet and obey orders–is cause for celebration. This is how children become adults who write great books–by having parents who encourage them to question and think for themselves.
One wonderful Dalmatian.Pub Date: June 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-3908-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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