An informative and warmly uplifting guide to the complex world of the disabled.
A comprehensive manual focuses on disability.
Garner, who was born with muscular dystrophy, has plenty of direct experience with adapting to a world that’s often ill-equipped to deal with disability and heedless of the hurdles involved. “The very nature of adapting to a relatively inaccessible world,” the author writes, “means we simply figure everything out for ourselves”—and with the aid of a group of people she refers to as “Partners in Policymaking” who might help along the way. She provides disabled readers (a large part of her obvious target audience) with checklists of things they’ll encounter, including how to handle tough interview questions and how to assess the efficiency of various federally funded programs for assistance. She points out many aspects of reality for disabled people, from the positive (the emergence of online professions and side hustles that present no obstacles) to the negative (the effect mental stress can have on all facets of life). Throughout her narrative, she fervently stresses the importance of creating a support network of people to help with various challenges. Those trials are at the heart of one of her main points: that being disabled is a constant struggle—for recognition, acceptance, and an even playing field. Skillfully using her own life story as a basic ingredient for her broader concerns, Garner employs clear, passionate prose in order to underscore a message of hope and encouragement. “You have things to contribute,” she writes. “You are knowledgeable, and you can share your talents with others.” She’s empathetic and mindful throughout, touching on a refreshingly wide variety of aspects of the disabled experience. Her combination of optimism and pragmatism makes this a bright spot in the category of manuals for the disabled.
An informative and warmly uplifting guide to the complex world of the disabled.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Garner Solutions, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A personal ’90s music overview that is far from definitive, but nevertheless instructive and often poignant.
An oddly entertaining collection of essays that covers more than 100 songs but doesn’t really explain the decade that created them—which may be beside the point.
A senior staff writer at the Ringer, Harvilla adapts this book from his podcast of the same name, in which he outlines the importance of a song from the 1990s and then discusses it with a guest. The adaptation can be clunky, as the author looks for writing conventions to group often disparate songs and artists together under themes like “Chaos Agents,” “Villains + Adversaries,” and “Romance + Sex + Immaturity.” The way he switches gears from rapturous praise of Celine Dion to the misheard lyrics of Hole’s “Doll Parts” is as jarring as riding with a teenager driving a stick shift for the first time. Harvilla deftly moves from explaining a song’s backstory to how it connects to him or the music of the time. However, he rarely connects a song to the outside world, which may be by design. He purposefully removes Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from everything that came after its stunning success. “What I’m saying is that sometimes you gotta let the singer be the singer and let the song be the song, and not hold its former culture-throttling ubiquity against it, nor hold its long-term unbearable biographical baggage against it,” he writes. “Empty your mind of all unpleasant and unnecessary context.” That approach doesn’t help to explain the ’90s—musically or historically—despite what the title promises. It can be forgiven, though, because Harvilla successfully captures what the ’90s felt like through his personal stories’ intriguing observations—e.g., “paging through somebody’s CD book was…like drinking beer out of someone else’s mouth.”
A personal ’90s music overview that is far from definitive, but nevertheless instructive and often poignant.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781538759462
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
