A sweet, unabashedly sentimental work.
An illustrated love letter to motherhood during a child’s earliest years.
Kim’s slim debut consists of a series of one-page, four-panel cartoons depicting dozens of key parenting moments. Some hinge on the stark and often hilarious realities of a toddler’s unruly biology (passing gas and spitting up each make more than one appearance). But far more of them center on subtler issues of psychology and personality, often in ways that will have parents of little kids nodding in recognition. Whether it’s a child’s sudden fascination with cleaning things or his need to be near his mother at all times (“He just wanted my company”) or unpredictable changes in his attention level, Kim portrays it with immense sympathy and good-natured humor. Her drawings are simple to the point of being crude, but they’re never confusing or ambiguous, and the childlike nature of the linework feels oddly appropriate to the subject matter. The book’s two overarching motifs are the utter, loving exhaustion that parents of young children inevitably experience and the infinite flexibility that characterizes good parenting. (There’s also the unspoken assumption that kids are incredibly, relentlessly, almost apocalyptically messy.) Kim’s reflections about how fast children grow up are universal, but she also works in a few slightly more idiosyncratic ideas, as when she depicts a child hugging a departing mother as being like plugging in a device to charge its batteries. There’s little in the way of specific instruction in these pages apart from things that most parents already know, such as the importance of encouraging good behavior and constructively discouraging bad behavior. But it will let those parents know that they’re not alone.
A sweet, unabashedly sentimental work.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-9198-3
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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