She was, in the words of former Kirkus editor Barbara Bader—whose American Picturebooks Marcus quotes—"the first to make the writing of picturebooks an art." As founding editor of the innovative William R. Scott children's book line, as well as the author of about 100 picture books during her 15-year career, Brown (1910-52) was also, as Marcus (who reviews children's books for Parenting Magazine) sums up, as responsible as anyone for making the field of children's picture books "a vital creative enterprise in her time." Brown's two enduring classics, The Runaway Bunny (inspired by a medieval ProvenÇal love ballad) and the "hypnotic" Goodnight Moon (still going strong after 45 years and four million copies), were ignored by The Horn Book and the New York Public Library but helped win her a 1947 celebrity profile in Life. Marcus recounts how Brown found her calling while an intern at the experimental Bank Street School for child-development study and teacher training—and how, by Bank Street policy, the books she wrote and edited were approved or revised according to the responses of "the threes" or "the fives" (or other appropriate age groups) enrolled at the school. From published reports, Brown's considerable correspondence, and interviews with those who knew her, Marcus pieces together a picture of his subject's doubts and achievements and ambition to write for grown-ups; her offbeat homes and quirky persona; and her friend-filled but lonely life punctuated by a few short affairs and engagements, then an unhappy relationship with a difficult woman who called herself Michael Strange, and, finally, love and imminent marriage to a younger man, Pebbles Rockefeller—only to die after surgery at age 42. If Marcus doesn't bring Brown to scintillating life, he does give an honest and informative account, including intriguing sketches of Bank Street and of developments and personages in the children's book world of the time. And he does it without the sanctimonious reverence so endemic in his field.
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0688171885
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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