Making a brave attempt to erect an ethical framework for ambitious pranksters, Web gagmeister Hargrave (Prank the Monkey, 2007, for adults) layers common-sense principles (“A good prank is easily cleaned up, taken down, or thrown away. This makes it harder for anyone to press charges”) with instructions for several classic gags, plus suggestions for easily available devices and materials to add to the prankster’s toolkit. Sometimes ignoring his own advice about safety, the author arranges projects in order of complexity from basic dribble glasses and telephone hijinks to, in later chapters, making exploding cigarettes or the world’s largest butt photo. Enhanced by lots of simple diagrams (as well as a helpful associated website) and packaged with an alternate sleeve to disguise the cover plus eight foldout recipes for such delicacies as fake vomit and tuna cookies, this compact vade mecum will thrill armchair jokers and may be taken to heart by a few of the active sort too. (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-448-44982-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
The author of the century-old, still-beloved Little Women led an extraordinarily interesting life herself, as Warrick makes plain in this dutiful biography. Alcott’s often-absent father, full of educational dreams and schemes and a friend of Emerson, her hard-working and hard-pressed mother, and her three sisters (models, as is well-known, for the siblings in the book) moved a great deal as she was growing up. Alcott soon realized that if there was to be money, she had to make it, and found a career writing sensational trash under a pseudonym and wonderful family stories under her own name. The biography opens with the story of Alcott’s letters from a Civil War hospital where she worked as a nurse, published in Boston Commonwealth magazine and her first real literary success. Vignettes and quotations enliven the text, which is written in a direct and straightforward style. Alcott’s work as a feminist and her possible love life are mentioned, if briefly. For those seeking yet another biography, this will serve. (b&w photos, not seen, chronology, notes, glossary, index) (Biography. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7660-1254-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Enslow
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
paper 0-395-97499-2 Introducing this overview of everyday life in a Plains Indian village circa 1868 is a map locating tribal lands of the Plains Indians. Contemporary Native Americans pose as models depicting the full regalia of the Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, Crow, and Blackfeet. In re-enactment style, reminiscent of a visit to a living history village, each “actor” then personifies a member in the family of Real Bird, a northern Cheyenne warrior from the plains of southeastern Montana. A staged full-color photograph of family members engaged in role-specific work, leisure, food preparation, warfare, trade, and ritual is at the center of each spread, surrounded by additional text and captions that expand each topic. Sees the Berries Woman and Pretty Plume Woman demonstrate the construction of a tipi in a frame-by-frame, five-step procedure; warriors and chiefs hold council in a pre-battle ceremony; Timber Leader shows off a bearskin that gives him healing powers. Artifacts such as beadwork, weapons, tools, toys, and medicine objects lend authenticity to this informative survey and history of the culture. (chronology, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-94542-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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