Readers don’t need to know anything about the composer to enjoy this lively biography, but it is hard to imagine anyone reading these pages who wouldn’t want to run right out to hear the “Water Music” or a snatch of the “Messiah.” Handel’s father didn’t want him to be a musician, but the boy snuck a clavichord into the attic and practiced in secret anyway. (“Not everyone has the courage to smuggle a clavichord past their parents.”) Thanks to the intervention of a noble, Handel was allowed to begin training, but as a compromise, was forced to study law as well. He studied in various places in Germany, where he was born, traveled in Italy, but settled in England to write opera. As Anderson (Burger Wuss, 1999, etc.) describes Handel’s operas, “The characters would sing arias in Italian, some of the most beautiful music ever heard onstage. Then they would stab each other.” Handel’s duel with a friend, the success of the “Water Music” and the disaster of the “Royal Fireworks,” and the final and continuous triumph of the “Messiah” are energetically reported in a light-hearted accounting. Hawkes (Dial-a-Ghost, p. 741, etc.) employs 18th-century borders and patterns in his fulsomely colored acrylics: light and shadow are used to excellent effect, and humorous touches abound. Handel himself, with his cherubic face and large fuzzy white wig, bounds from almost every page, fairly glowing with good will and music. (chronology, discography, further adult reading) (Biography. 8-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-1046-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevie and Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless.
Tales of a fourth grade ne’er-do-well.
It seems that young Jordan is stuck in a never-ending string of bad luck. Sure, no one’s perfect (except maybe goody-two-shoes William Feranek), but Jordan can’t seem to keep his attention focused on the task at hand. Try as he may, things always go a bit sideways, much to his educators’ chagrin. But Jordan promises himself that fourth grade will be different. As the year unfolds, it does prove to be different, but in a way Jordan couldn’t possibly have predicted. This humorous memoir perfectly captures the square-peg-in-a-round-hole feeling many kids feel and effectively heightens that feeling with comic situations and a splendid villain. Jordan’s teacher, Mrs. Fisher, makes an excellent foil, and the book’s 1970s setting allows for her cruelty to go beyond anything most contemporary readers could expect. Unfortunately, the story begins to run out of steam once Mrs. Fisher exits. Recollections spiral, losing their focus and leading to a more “then this happened” and less cause-and-effect structure. The anecdotes are all amusing and Jordan is an endearing protagonist, but the book comes dangerously close to wearing out its welcome with sheer repetitiveness. Thankfully, it ends on a high note, one pleasant and hopeful enough that readers will overlook some of the shabbier qualities. Jordan is White and Jewish while there is some diversity among his classmates; Mrs. Fisher is White.
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless. (Memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64723-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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