This blandly generic weight-loss guide doesn’t have enough heart to connect with readers.
The title promises a weight-loss memoir, but readers will find a flawed how-to guide instead.
At 14, Whitney Holcombe discovered she weighed 230 pounds and resolved to change. Starting by walking, she began the hard work and discipline to lose 100 pounds in a year. But after one chapter giving the basics of Holcombe’s story, this work shifts into a guide to losing weight, starting with the proverbial “wake-up call” and setting goals. Losing weight through exercise and eating healthily are addressed with some good information, including workout diagrams and primers on how to read nutrition labels. Unfortunately, Holcombe’s tone throughout the work may well put readers off; it’s an immature, “I know best” voice that evokes bossy trainers like Jillian Michaels. But there’s no empathy for readers’ struggles—her story about appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and condemning her fellow guests for choosing weight-loss surgery over exercise and portion control is but one example.
This blandly generic weight-loss guide doesn’t have enough heart to connect with readers. (weight-loss resources) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58270-409-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beyond Words/Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
An excellent and important introduction to a man who went from freedom to slavery and back again.
Most readers know something about the Underground Railroad, when African Americans went from slavery to freedom, but this volume presents the opposite scenario: the enslavement of thousands of free Northern blacks.
Solomon Northup was one of 400,000 free blacks living in the United States in 1841. He was living in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with his wife and three children, when two white men offered him good money to play violin for the circus they represented. Solomon jumped at the chance and soon found himself captured, beaten and transported to Louisiana, where he suffered a 12-year odyssey as a slave. Brevity, the focus on one man’s story and a lively prose style make this an unusually affecting and important narrative. All of the dialogue and many of the details come from Northup’s own memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853. Photographs, maps and reproductions of a bill of sale and various newspaper images complement the text. Unfortunately, sources are not always provided, as for a Frederick Douglass quotation on the final page, and the meager bibliography offers no sources for young readers, a shame since so many fine sources exist.
An excellent and important introduction to a man who went from freedom to slavery and back again. (afterword, time line, online resources, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0937-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
If teens are willing to overlook the clichés, they will gain appreciation for the warrior's path. However, this work will...
This guide to building character with a Korean martial arts focus is unusual but not completely successful.
Langlas draws inspiration from the Hwarangdo, ancient Korean warriors whose ideals became a philosophical basis for Taekwondo. Seven principles form a code of honor: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit, community service and love. By embodying these principles, teens can become warriors: people who are successful, happy members of society. Each of the principles and its fundamentals are explained clearly in simple, encouraging prose. The "Room for Reflection" sidebars create opportunities to apply what's being taught. The teen voices in the "Voice of a Warrior" and "A Story from the Warrior's Path" interpolations, however, feel more like writing-prompt responses than authentic expression. What lets down the work is the framing device in which wise Master Yi teaches his students each of the principles. Zen-sounding homilies like "The life of possessions is not always the life of having" and examples drawn from a Hwarangdo mindset might lead to eye rolls.
If teens are willing to overlook the clichés, they will gain appreciation for the warrior's path. However, this work will probably be most useful for martial arts instructors and teachers as a way to discuss character. (afterword, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-57542-388-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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