A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys.
The acclaimed author of Between the World and Me (2015) reflects on the family and community that shaped him in this adaptation of his 2008 adult memoir of the same name.
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’80s, Coates was a dreamer, all “cupcakes and comic books at the core.” He was also heavily influenced by “the New York noise” of mid-to-late-1980s hip-hop. Not surprisingly then, his prose takes on an infectious hip-hop poetic–meets–medieval folklore aesthetic, as in this description of his neighborhood’s crew: “Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front of your girl.” But it is Coates’ father—a former Black Panther and Afrocentric publisher—who looms largest in his journey to manhood. In a community where their peers were fatherless, Coates and his six siblings viewed their father as flawed but with the “aura of a prophet.” He understood how Black boys could get caught in the “crosshairs of the world” and was determined to save his. Coates revisits his relationships with his father, his swaggering older brother, and his peers. The result will draw in young adult readers while retaining all of the heart of the original.
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys. (maps, family tree) (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-03-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Music critic Orgill shares her love of music with her choice of women who influenced the music of their contemporaries and their successors, selecting the women according to her own aesthetic and experience in the music business. She highlights women who were “terrific” singers, who took charge of their lives and their careers, and who had an interesting story to tell. Each singer represents the decade in which she did her best or most prolific work. Sophie Tucker, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, and Anita O’Day represent the past. Joan Baez, Bette Midler, Madonna, and Lucinda Williams are singing today. Each chapter includes basic biographical information, anecdotes that illustrate the qualities that make each singer memorable, and descriptions of the singers’ unique musical attributes. Historical photographs illustrate the text. Teens will relate to the inclusion of facts in sidebars such as “What Madonna Wore.” We learn that Ethel Merman looked for bargains in everyday dress but splurged on a mink-trimmed chartreuse evening gown. Orgill also notes what the singers earned and how that compared to average salaries at the time. In “What’s New, ” Orgill details the changes in recorded music from the 12-inch record introduced in 1902 to the digital videodisc of 1997. Missing, however, is the development of music on the Internet. Other sidebars bring attention to musical styles or to noteworthy musical events of each period. Also included is a discography and bibliography. A lively, informative, and enthusiastic title. (Nonfiction.12+)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-81991-9
Page Count: 168
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting—and always gripping.
The author of Seabiscuit (2001) returns with another dynamic, well-researched story of guts overcoming odds.
Hillenbrand examines the life of Louis Zamperini, an American airman who, after his bomber crashed in the Pacific during World War II, survived 47 days on a life raft only to be captured by Japanese soldiers and subjected to inhuman treatment for the next two years at a series of POW camps. That his life spiraled out of control when he returned home to the United States is understandable. However, he was able to turn it around after meeting Billy Graham, and he became a Christian speaker and traveled to Japan to forgive his tormentors. The author reconstructs Zamperini’s wild youth, when his hot temper, insubordination, and bold pranks seemed to foretell a future life of crime. His talents as a runner, however, changed all that, getting him to the 1936 Olympics and to the University of Southern California, where he was a star of the track team. When the story turns to World War II, Hillenbrand expands her narrative to include men who served with him in the Air Corps in the Pacific. Through letters and interviews, she brings to life not just the men who were with Zamperini on the life raft and in the Japanese camps, but the families they left behind. The suffering of the men is often difficult to read, for the details of starvation, thirst and shark attacks are followed by the specifics of the brutalities inflicted by the Japanese, particularly the sadistic Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who seemed dedicated to making Zamperini’s life unbearable. Hillenbrand follows Watanabe’s life after the Japanese surrender, providing the perfect foil to Zamperini’s. When Zamperini wrote to his former tormentor to forgive him and attempted to meet him in person, Watanabe rejected him. Throughout are photographs of World War II bombers, POW camps, Zamperini and his fellow GIs and their families and sweethearts, providing a glimpse into a bygone era. Zamperini is still thriving at age 93.
Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting—and always gripping.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6416-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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