Real people sharing their thoughts in different ways makes for a compelling and heartfelt compilation.
Hasan Ali’s collection of journal entries serves up wisdom, humor, and life lessons.
Taken from the journal entries of visitors to more than 100 community green spaces created by the nonprofit group Nature Sacred, this volume compiles writings submitted over the past 25 years. The pieces—by turns funny, sad, practical, inspiring, and frivolous—come from numerous locations, including the Mt. Washington Arboretum in Baltimore, Maryland; the Naval Cemetery Landscape in Brooklyn, New York; the Brenton Arboretum in Dallas Center, Iowa; the Life Garden at Fort Payne Walking Park in Fort Payne, Alabama; and the Terrace Garden at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, among many others. The topics are divided into five categories: nature’s healing power, hardship and hope, encouraging words, wisdoms and life lessons, and connections and community. The contributions include crude stick figure drawings and more elaborate illustrations, laconic wisdom (“I came to talk to the willows. They speak very slowly. No rush”) and intricate prose and poetry. Visitors were invited to add anything they liked to the journals, including jokes and life news (“My first baby was born two days ago!”) as well as musings that are quite philosophical and esoteric. It’s a convenient text that one can pick up when the impulse strikes, read for a few minutes, and receive a wide variety of thoughts and perspectives in different writing and drawing styles. Some of the best material comes from children; Dylan writes, “If anything goes wrong remember it could be worse.” Seven-year-old Ella reports: “I love this plase becus this book breegs all of are feelings togethr.” One of the joys of this compilation is the way that passages like these live side-by-side with others from more veteran writers (and spellers). It’s a book that will sneak up on you—a beautiful collection of voices from the past quarter-century.
Real people sharing their thoughts in different ways makes for a compelling and heartfelt compilation.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9798218154554
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Nature Sacred
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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