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
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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