A browser’s delight, packaged to fit small coffee tables.
A tantalizing sampler of American roadside attractions, ghosts and spooky local legends for audiences not yet familiar with the TV show of the same name and its attendant series of state-by-state print guides.
Shoveled haphazardly into thematic chapters, the several hundred stopovers range from old reliables like Roswell, Bigfoot, jackalopes and the Watts Towers to various art car shows, festivals like the annual Roadkill Cook-off in West Virginia and such undeservedly obscure locales as New Jersey’s Shades of Death Road and Maine’s International Cryptozoology Museum. The authors supply a paragraph or two of credulous commentary on each that includes specific places and people along with back story and, for the more elusive or supernatural oddities, locally gathered rumors and anecdotes. Small but sharp photos—or melodramatic Photoshopped images for the various specters—on every page add both atmosphere and additional credibility for readers who may have trouble believing in, for instance, the many giant fiberglass “Muffler Men” dotting the Midwest or all the buildings shaped like teapots, picnic baskets and various foodstuffs. Readers allergic to exclamation points may want to skip this one.
A browser’s delight, packaged to fit small coffee tables. (Infotainment. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4027-5462-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on the Nights’ place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening’s tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying “Ebony Horse” by “twiddling” its ears, contending djinn argue whether “Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour” is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a “Diamond Anklet” subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff’s stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84686-122-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A prolific reporter of paranormal phenomena strains to bring that same sense of wonder to 12 “transposed”—that is, paraphrased from interviews but related in first person—accounts of extraordinary experiences. Some feats are more memorable than others; compared to Bethany Hamilton’s return to competitive surfing after having her arm bitten off by a shark and Mark Inglis’ climb to the top of Mount Everest on two prosthetic legs, Joe Hurley’s nine-month walk from Cape Cod to Long Beach, Calif., is anticlimactic. Dean Karnazes hardly seems to be exerting himself as he runs 50 marathons on 50 consecutive days, and the comments of an Air Force Thunderbirds pilot and a military Surgeon’s Assistant in Iraq come off as carefully bland. The survivors of a hurricane at sea, a lightning strike and a tornado, on the other hand, tell more compelling stories. Most of the color photos are at least marginally relevant, and each entry closes with a short note on its subject’s subsequent activities. Casual browsers will be drawn to at least some of the reconstructed narratives in this uneven collection. A reading list would have been more useful than the superfluous index, though. Fun, in a scattershot sort of way. (Nonfiction browsing item. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4027-6711-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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