Ill-informed and bafflingly arrogant.
A treatise on why art matters.
Claiming no author more specific than the publisher itself, this teaching manual opens with a presumptuously intimate tone and preposterous assertions. The narrator tells readers that they (“you”) have probably been interested in art for a long time without knowing it: When “you” made drawings as a (younger) child or saw illustrations in picture books, you didn’t recognize it as art because “probably no one told you these were art.” Adults are oblivious too—asked why art matters, they say only, “Because it’s very old” or “Because it costs a lot.” This isn’t textual humor or playfulness; the tone seems to be serious. Like adults, art books are useless; galleries and museums are boring and dry. So who can explain why art matters? Only this book, brazenly, conjuring straw man after straw man: Straw adults, straw books, straw museums and galleries, straw upper-class readers. Repeatedly correcting nonexistent myths and assumptions nobody ever made, the text labels art a “tool” to use for six specific things: “Remembering, Appreciation, Hope, Sadness, Balance, [and] Making Sense of Money.” Some truths appear—art, indeed, inspires emotion and new viewpoints; art, indeed, helps people cope with life—but the book’s categorizations are nonparallel and bizarre. The fine-art reproductions are mediocre, their interpretations narrow or, sadly, off-base. Perhaps saddest of all is the absence of any notion that art matters, also, for aesthetic reasons—like beauty.
Ill-informed and bafflingly arrogant. (image references) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-912891-29-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: School of Life
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Starting with a lonely slice of pizza pictured on the cover and the first page, Thornhill launches into a wide-ranging study of the history and culture of food—where it comes from, how to eat it and what our food industries are doing to the planet. It’s a lot to hang on that slice of pizza, but there are plenty of interesting tidbits here, from Clarence Birdseye’s experiments with frozen food to how mad cow disease causes the brain to turn spongy to industrial food production and global warming. Unfortunately, the volume is designed like a bad high-school yearbook. Most pages are laid out in text boxes, each containing a paragraph on a discrete topic, but with little in the way of an organizing theme to tie together the content of the page or spread. Too many colors, too much jumbled-together information and total reliance on snippets of information make this a book for young readers more interested in browsing than reading. Kids at the upper edge of the book's range would be better served by Richie Chevat's adaptation of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2009). (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-897349-96-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Maple Tree Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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