The World Wildlife Fund has been working to preserve a selection of unique and biologically diverse terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, a project called Global 200. This book of photographs is a paean to that endeavor. It’s visually stunning, as the work of Galen Rowell, Frans Lanting, and David Doubilet is expected to be, and the text is well-intended, forgettable pap: “We occupy an extraordinary planet, a spherical garden teeming with life.” The thrust here is nature magnificent, shorn of tooth and claw and all the rough edges, in her finest clothes and most beguiling company: Lanting concentrates on the humors and conviviality found in plants and animals; Rowell works with the potentially outrageous effects of natural light on the landscape; and Doubilet shoots the otherworld of the marine subsurface. The unfortunate, and unintended, message percolating from these pages is that conservation organizations like the WWF have given up on man’s instinctive willingness to do right by planet Earth. Like refugees running from the onslaught, they are grabbing their most precious tokens of remembrance and stealing them off to an uncertain future, while they can.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60466-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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