10
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Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1954
ISBN: 0399501487
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Coward-McCann
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1955
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A gorgeous work that stretches the imagination and delights the senses.
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Selections from Neruda’s final work come magically to life with inventive illustrations in this bilingual volume.
Completed shortly before his death in 1973, the original collection of 74 poems posing 320 questions has here been whittled down to 70 questions selected from 39 poems appearing both in English and the original Spanish. Readers will be enchanted by their mind-expanding whimsy and creativity. Chilean artist Valdivia’s stylized artwork, executed predominantly in blues, reds, and yellows against black or white backgrounds, feels grounded in folk-art traditions. Created with pencil and ink, with photographs in the illustrator’s note showing the work in progress, the full-page art is visually captivating and enhanced with texture—lines, splatters, blotting—both complementing and extending the text. “Does the earth chirp like a cricket / in the symphony of the skies? // Who shouted for joy / when the color blue was born?” is accompanied by a charcoal cricket standing against a dizzying swoop of blue expanse and the curve of rising mountains and vegetation. “Where can you find a bell / that rings inside your dreams? // Where does the stuff of dreams go? / Does it pass into the dreams of others?” is juxtaposed with an image of a rider, asleep beneath a blanket, astride a pregnant mare. Exquisite endpapers pay tribute to the universe contained within: “Where did the full moon forget / her flour-dusted nightgown?”
A gorgeous work that stretches the imagination and delights the senses. (editor’s note, translator’s note) (Illustrated poetry. 5-adult)Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-59270-322-7
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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Already reeling from loss, a Black high school senior brings her OCD, anxiety, and depression into March 2020.
In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gethsemane Montego is a musical-theater–loving, BTS-fangirling, 16-year-old senior at New Rochelle High School. She and her two best friends—Jewish Korean valedictorian Tovah and Cuban American star quarterback Diego—attend the same high school where Geth’s security guard father died tragically three years ago during a shooting. Geth resents how quickly her mother has moved on—with a White man, at that—but, as best they can, her friends help her manage the increases in her anxiety and compulsions as well as her stifling grief. Awaiting admission results from Columbia is an added stressor, but as the coronavirus case numbers quickly shoot up, Geth faces multiple burdens and traumas. Police violence, racial inequity, hyperpartisanship, immigration, economic anxieties, and a complicated coming-out story all pile on top of the pandemic’s hefty body count. Geth is a likable, smart Gen Z protagonist in this modern epistolary work that combines diary entries, text messages, news reports, emails, and English lit essays to immersive effect. Wringing so much content, so much hurt, into a YA novel is a tall order that yields very mixed results. Still, whether through cutting humor or disparate political perspectives, Farley offers readers undeniable value in this retelling of recent, unforgettable history.
Commendable ambition that may help readers look forward. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61775-975-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Black Sheep Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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