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
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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