Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” receives an invigorating revival in this poetry collection that illuminates the pressures and pleasures of work, including some 34 career choices. “Morning” conveys the vigorous energy work demands through crisp imagery and dynamic phrases: “Engines hum / heels click / and doors thud / behind ambitions.” Poems often describe the ordinary and technical components of the job; “Librarian” features a male librarian’s preparation for his boys-only book club. Others elucidate the surprising motivations behind workers’ chosen career paths; “Dog Walker” reveals that a former attorney sought this less stressful career because “the predictable company of dogs / ...didn’t give him nightmares / or cold sweats / the way standing before / a glowering judge and jury did.” Halsey and Addy’s illustrations match the emotions of the varied subjects, the mixed-media art exuding a muted grittiness as characters perform their daily tasks. Compiled photographs, papers and household objects create multifaceted collages and textured backdrops, and the result is an intriguing, albeit offbeat, examination of the world of work. (Picture book/poetry. 9-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-618-90351-1
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience.
A Taiwanese family tries their luck in America.
In this verse novel, it’s 1980, and nearly 11-year-old Ai Shi and her mother prepare to leave Taipei to join her father in California, where he is pursuing a business opportunity with a friend. The extended family send them off, telling Ai Shi she’s so lucky to go to the “beautiful country”—the literal translation of the Chinese name for the U.S. Once they are reunited with Ba, he reveals that they have instead poured their savings into a restaurant in the remote Los Angeles County town of Duarte. Ma and Ba need to learn to cook American food, but at least, despite a betrayal by Ba’s friend, they have their own business. However, the American dream loses its shine as language barriers, isolation, financial stress, and racism take their toll. Ai Shi internalizes her parents’ disappointment in their new country by staying silent about bullying at school and her own unmet needs. Her letters home to her favorite cousin, Mei, maintain that all is well. After a year of enduring unrelenting challenges, including vandalism by local teens, the family reaches its breaking point. Hope belatedly arrives in the form of community allies and a change of luck. Kuo deftly touches on complex issues, such as the human cost of the history between China and Taiwan as well as the socio-economic prejudices and identity issues within Asian American communities.
A powerfully candid and soulful account of an immigrant experience. (Verse historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311898-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Personal but personable, too, with glints of quiet humor.
In a wryly introspective vein, a cartoonist offers a four-season round of illustrated observations on topics as varied as clouds, school, and the search for a perfect pumpkin.
“I want to put down / on paper the feeling / of fresh possibilities,” Snider writes in his “Spring” section. With reflections on the tricky art of writing poems serving as a thematic refrain, he goes on in a seasonal cycle to explorations of nature (“How do the birds / decide where / to alight?”), indoor activities (“In wool socks on thick carpet / I am MR. ELECTRIC”), and common experiences, from loading up a gigantic backpack with new books for the first day of school to waiting…and waiting…and waiting for a bus in the rain. He also invites readers to consider broad ideas, such as the rewards of practicing and the notion that failure can lead to the realization that “I’m still a work in progress.” Snider writes mostly in free verse but does break into rhyme now and then for the odd sonic grace note. Though he identifies only one entry as an actual haiku, his tersely expressed thoughts evoke that form throughout. His art is commensurately spare, with depictions of slender, dot-eyed, olive-skinned figures, generally solitary and of indeterminate age, posing balletically in, mostly, squared-off sequential panels making up mini-narratives of one to three pages.
Personal but personable, too, with glints of quiet humor. (Graphic poetry. 10-13)Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781797219653
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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