A feel-good book that effectively mixes gross-out humor, a bit of monster-y horror, and sweet affection.
In this illustrated children’s book, a monster who loves giving hugs figures out how to make friends.
All the monsters in Ghastly Gigapolis hide when the Squeezor comes to town for supplies. Why? Because he “loves to give hugs. Great, big, wrap-his-arms-around-you-twice, squeezy hugs”—and although that doesn’t sound so bad, he also “looks like he wants to eat you up!” Besides those long, long arms, he’s got a mouth full of fangs, huge horns, “squashy” feet with greasy toenails, and sharp claws. But the Squeezor doesn’t actually want to eat anyone; he can’t help how he looks, and he’d like to be friends. He reads some self-help books, including 7 Habits of Highly Disgruntled Monsters, but they don’t give the creature any insight into himself. A portrait of his “Great-Grandmother Squeezums” inspires him to consider others, instead. In town, the Squeezor finds ways to help his fellow monsters by using his long arms. He gets a job and even discovers that his special hug cheers up the local Grumpypuss. Word gets out, and soon the Squeezor is welcomed by everyone; now, they all come out for a hug when he comes to town. Benishek (Dr. Guinea Pig George, 2017, etc.) offers a funny and sweet book that’s good for reading aloud. It features lively prose and references that will appeal to adults as well as kids, as when the Squeezor watches the TV show Game of Bones. It doesn’t quite make sense that a town full of monsters—many of whom also look ready to “eat you up”—would be so put off by the Squeezor, but that’s a small matter. Debut illustrator Fiss’ illustrations have plenty of variety and expressiveness without overdoing the monsters’ scariness; clever details expand the storytelling, such as the darling, if fanged, bunny slippers on vampire Bitey McBitesalot. The book is also available in a special edition for dyslexic readers, printed in an easy-to-read font (not reviewed).
A feel-good book that effectively mixes gross-out humor, a bit of monster-y horror, and sweet affection.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-387-02173-4
Page Count: 42
Publisher: MacLaren-Cochrane Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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