by Susan Kuklin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001
In a fascinating approach to an unusual subject for young readers, this noted non-fiction author describes the intimate details of an unusual trial. Illegal immigrants are exploited through extortion and violence in a way of life hidden from most Americans and not often prosecuted. In this case, a kidnapper is held to account for his part in holding a Chinese immigrant for ransom from his family. The question uppermost is the actual identity of the perpetrator. Having followed the case inside the courtroom and conducted interviews with many of the protagonists, Kuklin is able to offer direct quotations from the transcripts, the presiding judge, the assistant district attorney, the defense lawyer, the detectives, and some members of the jury, who give a vivid picture of the case. She also gets into the minds of the people involved as they discuss their strategies, their anxieties, and the pressures that face them: the defense lawyer is passionate in his concern for getting justice for his client; the prosecutor articulates the social responsibility she feels towards the victims. Everyone depicted represents the highest quality of behavior in a criminal courtroom. Short episodic chapters headed by a phrase from the text or a bullet or two that describe the action give the impression of a scene from the TV series Law and Order. In a feature designed not to intrude on the telling, sidebars explain points of law. Notes, a bibliography, and a glossary give suggestions for further reading and additional information on legal terminology. Photographs taken in the courtroom by the author or reproductions of ones introduced into evidence add to the authenticity of the text. A good read and an absorbing look inside a trial by jury. (Nonfiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6457-5
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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by Susan Kuklin ; photographed by Susan Kuklin
edited by Neil Philip ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 2000
Native American voices spanning a hundred years present a collective sense of childhood and a scope of individual experience. Similar in format to Philip’s Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems (1996) and In a Sacred Manner I Live: Native American Wisdom (1997), this collection speaks more closely to a young audience in its subject matter. From the words of Charles A. Eastman and Sarah Winnemuca to the more contemporary voices of Louis Two Ravens Irwin and James Sewid, the narratives describe aspects of childhood life in many tribes. Subjects range from playing house and playing war to having hair cut at a boarding school and being buried alive in order to hide from white men. Like the previous collections, this is illustrated with archival photographs, printed in duotone, that are evocative, but overly romantic in tone. The fact that the experiences were recorded, in word or picture, almost entirely in the late-19th and early-20th centuries gives an overall sense of distance and of “The-Indian-of-the-Past” to this collection, although readers may find the narratives themselves immediate. Philip gives both English and actual names of people and tribes after each selection, as well as sources for all pictures and texts at the end of the volume. A bibliography of further reading and indexes of speakers, writers, and Indian nations enhance the collection. Wonderful words in a museum-quality package, readers may find their way slowly to this book, but they should find the trip worthwhile. (introduction, indexes, further reading, source notes) (Nonfiction. 10+)
Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2000
ISBN: 0-395-64528-X
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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edited by Neil Philip & illustrated by Claire Henley
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adapted by Neil Philip & illustrated by Jacqueline Mair
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edited by Neil Philip & illustrated by Isabelle Brent
by Dan Hofstadter ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 1992
For The New Yorker, Hofstadter has taken over the role Calvin Tomkins used to fill—as art chronicler: half critic/half profile- maker. And at this he is very, very good. In the five long pieces collected here—about Jean Helion, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Avigdor Arikha, David Bomberg and the subsequent generation of London painters (Kossof, Kitaj, etc.), and Richard Diebenkorn—he almost negligently scatters brilliant associational perceptions (why, for example, Cartier-Bresson the photojournalist was hardly different from C-B the surrealist: the same ``cretinous voyaging'') while being cannier than most art writers about the varieties and dilemmas—glorious both—of representational painting. He also writes (occasionally he posturingly overwrites) with a genuinely beautiful style. But what is a little disconcerting is the form of the articles: Hofstadter seems to appear in the company of the artists he writes about here not exactly as a journalist but as an instant intimate or friend; there is an air of relaxed offhandedness (``I got to know Richard Diebenkorn in 1986, a few years before he and his wife, Phyllis, moved from Santa Monica to Healdsburg, in northern California. Dick was already sixty-five then but a lot of his strict, formal, well-to-do Protestant background still showed''). This self-conscious relaxation of role carries over as well into what he has to say about the painters: He has scorn finally for the Londoners (``dungeon masters'') on account of their all-or-nothing aesthetic neuroticism and battles with life, while reserving his highest admiration for the artist who, like Diebenkorn, is serious without solemnity. Deflation of high artistic pretension and behavior in favor of pragmatic dilution always has been, editorially, a New Yorker stock-in-trade—and Hofstadter is particularly good at it. But the attractiveness of the interesting men (and most often quite interesting artists too) that he writes about seems finally more about personal style than art.
Pub Date: April 7, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-58111-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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