A deluxe volume combining the text of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead and the photographer who worked with her in Bali and Mexico makes a bid for the market of The Family of Man. While the text moves from birth to the last reaches of life in full cycle, the accompanying photographs, although of the highest quality, do not achieve that range. Margaret Mead writes of the family as the continuing source of human life, the cradle, the teaching place for all future endeavor. She writes of mothers whose unconditional love is so essential, of fathers, representing the outside world to which children grow, families from atomic to tribal, brothers and sisters and grandparents, the child alone, friends, and that time when "the old rules lose their meaning," adolescence. Her text has an almost mythic ring as she tells the universal story of man, woman and child. Ken Heyman's pictures reveal the child at the breast, at play, at work, being comforted or taught, by themselves, with parents, grandparents. While together they form a poem in prose and photograph, they do not possess the completeness of human experience that made Family of Man so unique. For those seeking to renew that earlier revelation, the new Family may well speak.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0025836900
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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