A charming, thought-provoking walk in the woods.
Charkes (Outdoors With Kids—Philadelphia, 2013, etc.) shares a collection of countryside-inspired essays, many previously published.
This compilation opens with a thoughtful examination of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, history as seen through the art of 19th-century folk painter Edward Hicks and the writings of William Penn. In this essay, Charkes suggests an essential human need to connect with nature (“Through wildness comes peace”). Most people, she says, are disconnected: “For many of us, we have to take a car to get to a place that looks anything like…country.” She then suggests a course of action: “To know the wild, look from where you are, listen from where you stand. Here and now.” Each chapter begins with pretty, relevant black-and-white illustrations by artist Priestley, who also provided the color cover art. Each of four chapters is devoted to a particular season, followed by an epilogue featuring the haunting song of the veery, a small bird that the author notes is still audible in the increasingly urban landscape. She pays careful attention to natural elements in a world where small farms “still form part of the fabric of the landscape, but nowadays they are embroidery, no longer the warp and woof of a living rural culture.” The carefully crafted, engaging essays seamlessly interlace Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau quotations with the unforeseen and whimsical. Charkes links the legendary Boston Red Sox player Carl Yastrzemski with the lowly dandelion flower and describes butterflies as doing “the insect equivalent of a pub crawl from one flowerhead to another.” With its minute, local detail, Charkes’ musings and gentle queries will resonate with all readers who wonder about the value of flowers and birdsong in an increasingly urban world.
A charming, thought-provoking walk in the woods.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615902142
Page Count: 170
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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