Access to family archives and new material provides the basis for a worthy history of little-known artists.
A biography focuses on two prolific and award-winning 20th-century illustrators.
In this work, Cook (Walking Portland, Oregon, 2013) explores the lives and work of Elmer and Berta Hader, artists who produced dozens of picture books, including the winner of the 1949 Caldecott Medal. The volume follows the Haders from their first meeting in 1915 San Francisco (Berta stored Elmer’s painting equipment so he would not have to carry it up Telegraph Hill every day) to Greenwich Village, where they married after Elmer’s return from war, to the idiosyncratic stone house they designed and built themselves in a bucolic Hudson River village. The Haders were part of the writer-artist communities in both San Francisco and New York, and authors Rose Wilder Lane and Katherine Anne Porter were among the frequent weekend guests at their home. Cook also follows the evolution of the Haders’ careers, which became closely entwined after their marriage, as they moved from magazine illustration to children’s books, eventually creating their own in addition to illustrating the words of other authors. The biography examines their work within the broader context of the growing interest in children’s publishing in the first half of the 20th century as well as the impact of the consolidation and mergers in the industry in the 1960s and ’70s. Thanks to Cook’s examination of family archives and a trove of items discovered by a later owner of the stone house, the book is full of insights into the Haders’ blend of bohemian artistry and Depression-era thrift. (After finding a spider in a window, “the Haders fed him flies, thought the web a work of art and said spiders bring good fortune and Elwell brought them luck.”) Although the work restricts itself largely to summaries of the Haders’ books, rather than offering literary or artistic criticism or an analysis of their contemporary relevance, it is still a valuable contribution to the history of children’s literature as well as an enjoyable and well-researched story about two artists devoted to their work, their friends, and each other.
Access to family archives and new material provides the basis for a worthy history of little-known artists.Pub Date: June 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-934961-05-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Concordia University Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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