 KIRKUS REVIEWS
This Week's Featured Reviews
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 | DeLillo, Don FALLING MAN
April 01, 2007 - It's a subtle deployment of intersecting narratives which begins on September 11, 2001, as the Twin Towers are falling. Keith Neudecker, a New York City office worker who survives the disaster, returns, not to the apartment where he has lived since separating from his wife Lianne, but to her and their young son Justin: a gaunt, wraith-like figure covered in ashes, broken glass and blood, carrying a stranger's briefcase. In brief, cryptic segments that move backward and forward in time, we learn of the couple's past difficulties and nominal "reconciliation," in relation to Lianne's troubled closeness to her elegant mother Nina and memories of her father, her volunteer work with a neighborhood Alzheimer's patients' support group, the poker playing cronies with whom Keith has led a separate life and the owner of the briefcase he carried out of the Tower...You'll scarcely be able to draw a breath throughout its lucid, overpowering climactic pages. ...Full Review
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| Lerner, Michael A. DRY MANHATTAN: Prohibition in New York City
April 01, 2007 - The clear, focused text provides ample evidence of this first-time author's wide research and deep familiarity with the relevant sources. Lerner recognizes Prohibition's central issue: the desire to define morality narrowly and to force that definition upon others. Teeming with immigrants and overflowing with booze, New York City seemed an unlikely battlefield, but William H. Anderson and his Anti-Saloon League came, saw and conquered. Anderson began his fierce and creative anti-alcohol campaign upon arrival in the city in 1914; by 1920, Prohibition was constitutional. The author does a good job of exploring and explaining Anderson's strategies and of identifying the cultural and historical forces that enabled his initial successes, among them the identification of beer-drinking with Germans, America's opponents in World War I....A fine history of a most troubling time. ...Full Review
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Current Issue: Fiction
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| Caldwell, Wayne CATALOOCHEE
April 01, 2007 - North Carolina's Cataloochee Valley saw its first farms and homesteads in the 1830s. The United States government took possession of this land when it created the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1930s. Caldwell traces the 100-year history ...Full Review
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| DeLillo, Don FALLING MAN
April 01, 2007 - It's a subtle deployment of intersecting narratives which begins on September 11, 2001, as the Twin Towers are falling. Keith Neudecker, a New York City office worker who survives the disaster, returns, not to the apartment where he has lived since separating from his wife Lianne, but to her and their young son Justin: a gaunt, wraith-like figure covered in ashes, broken glass and blood, carrying a stranger's briefcase. In brief, cryptic segments that move backward and forward in time, we learn of the couple's past difficulties and nominal "reconciliation," in relation to Lianne's troubled closeness to her elegant mother Nina and memories of her father, her volunteer work with a neighborhood Alzheimer's patients' support group, the poker playing cronies with whom Keith has led a separate life and the owner of the briefcase he carried out of the Tower...You'll scarcely be able to draw a breath throughout its lucid, overpowering climactic pages. ...Full Review
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| Disher, Garry CHAIN OF EVIDENCE
April 15, 2007 - It's a motley group charged with keeping the peace in Victoria, a smallish town southeast of Melbourne. They're smart, dumb, scrupulously honest, irretrievably bent, cops born to be cops and cops hopelessly miscast. Detective Sergeant Ellen Destry ...Full Review
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| Durham, David Anthony ACACIA
April 15, 2007 - Volume One of a planned trilogy, it's set in a fictional empire, the Known World, whose political center is the fertile and temperate island realm of Acacia, ruled by King Leodan Akaran. He's a compassionate monarch who sincerely mourns his beloved ...Full Review
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| Hemmings, Kaui Hart THE DESCENDANTS
April 15, 2007 - The great-grandson of a Hawaiian princess, lawyer Matt King is under pressure to decide to whom his family should sell its vast land holdings when he learns that his wife Joanie, comatose since a boat-racing accident, is definitely going to die once ...Full Review
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| Kavenna, Joanna INGLORIOUS
April 15, 2007 - Kavenna (The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule, 2006) sets her heroine on a slippery path. Rosa's mother's death has triggered some kind of breakdown and she has begun to withdraw from the kind of life everyone else is busy leading, ...Full Review
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| Michaels, Leonard THE COLLECTED STORIES
April 15, 2007 - In this galvanizing book, the stories of Michaels's debut, Going Places (1969), as well as I Would Have Saved Them If I Could (1975), are reprinted, one example of his talent after another. In "Manikin," a college coed is raped by a Turkish exchange ...Full Review
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| O'Brien, Charles CRUEL CHOICES
April 01, 2007 - By the spring of 1788, failed crops and indescribable poverty have put France in an appalling state. Against this background, Anne Cartier searches for Lucie Gigot, a young tenant missing from the estate of Marie, the Comtesse de Beaumont. Marie is ...Full Review
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| Seliy, Shauna WHEN WE GET THERE
April 01, 2007 - Thirteen-year-old Lucas's handsome and universally respected and loved father Jimmy died in a mining explosion years earlier. Now Lucas's adored mother Mirjana has disappeared, leaving behind only a short note. Staying with his feisty grandmother, ...Full Review
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| Thompson, Jean THROW LIKE A GIRL
April 01, 2007 - Lives of girls and women (an early Munro title) are Thompson's province. Its occupants include the high-school misfit ("The Brat") whose defensive friendship with an obese, resentful classmate nurtures the kind of paranoid rage that erupts all too ...Full Review
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| Tierney, Ronald ASPHALT MOON
April 01, 2007 - The Indiana PD has a quandary shared by Shanahan's lover Maureen Smith, his fellow peeper Howie Cross and, for a while, by "the old detective" himself. Shanahan and Maureen have only recently bought their place from a well-known judge, and judges, ...Full Review
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Current Issue: Non-Fiction
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| Bennett, Joe MUSTN'T GRUMBLE
April 15, 2007 - The author, a former teacher who left England somewhat accidentally for New Zealand, returns quite calculatingly after 18 years to write a book about what he will discover. His mission is to recreate a 1926 motor tour taken by once-popular British ...Full Review
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| Coetzee, J.M. INNER WORKINGS
April 15, 2007 - Gathered here are 16 book reviews, four summary "introductions" to new translations or editions of major writers' works and a single celebration of a "classic" film ("Arthur Miller, The Misfits"), which appeared in the anthology Writers at the ...Full Review
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| Kapuscinski, Ryszard TRAVELS WITH HERODOTUS
April 01, 2007 - Herodotus, the 5th-century chronicler, scarcely figured in the curriculum when Kapuscinski was going to university just after WWII. Though a Polish translation had been completed, he recalls in opening, it went unpublished throughout Josef Stalin's ...Full Review
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| Lerner, Michael A. DRY MANHATTAN: Prohibition in New York City
April 01, 2007 - The clear, focused text provides ample evidence of this first-time author's wide research and deep familiarity with the relevant sources. Lerner recognizes Prohibition's central issue: the desire to define morality narrowly and to force that definition upon others. Teeming with immigrants and overflowing with booze, New York City seemed an unlikely battlefield, but William H. Anderson and his Anti-Saloon League came, saw and conquered. Anderson began his fierce and creative anti-alcohol campaign upon arrival in the city in 1914; by 1920, Prohibition was constitutional. The author does a good job of exploring and explaining Anderson's strategies and of identifying the cultural and historical forces that enabled his initial successes, among them the identification of beer-drinking with Germans, America's opponents in World War I....A fine history of a most troubling time. ...Full Review
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| Segev, Tom 1967
April 01, 2007 - In the mid-1960s, writes Ha'aretz columnist Segev (One Palestine, Complete, 2000, etc.), most Israelis were convinced that the Arab nations surrounding them would one day resume their goal of destroying Israel, and, moreover, "that Israelis could ...Full Review
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| Shrum, Robert NO EXCUSES
April 15, 2007 - Shrum, now a senior fellow at NYU, recalls three and a half decades in the political game, where he started out in 1970 as the wunderkind 26-year-old speechwriter for New York Mayor John Lindsay and then became a top and sometimes controversial ...Full Review
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| Sun Shuyun THE LONG MARCH
April 01, 2007 - The mythic stature of the Long March is a given for the author, a Beijing native who now divides her time between that city and London. Throughout her remarkable text, she recites songs she learned in childhood, alludes to commemorative films she ...Full Review
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Current Issue: Children's
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| Abdel-Fattah, Randa DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS?
April 15, 2007 - An "Australian-Muslin-Palestinian" teen opts to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time, embarking on a courageous exercise in self-understanding. Sixteen-year-old Amal attends an elite prep school in a Melbourne suburb. Poised to begin the ...Full Review
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| Arnold, Caroline TAJ MAHAL
April 15, 2007 - Placed over wide, sumptuous carpets of finely detailed golden vines or other motifs and illustrated with accomplished Indian-style miniatures, this lyrical account frames a touching tale of love and loss in magnificent visuals. Falling in love as ...Full Review
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| Babbitt, Natalie JACK PLANK TELLS TALES
April 15, 2007 - Babbitt's first offering in 25 years does not disappoint. Jack's pirate crew has fallen on hard times, and as Jack prefers not to take part in the plundering and so contributes the least to their profits, the crew decides that they have to let him ...Full Review
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| Bee, William AND THE TRAIN GOES...
April 01, 2007 - "Here is the station all noisy and full, / and the station clock goes, 'Tick-tock, tickerty-tock . . . '/ and the man in the station office cries, 'Hurry up! Hurry up! Any more tickets . . . ?' " So begins this charming chronicle of the cacophonous ...Full Review
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| Charlip, Remy A PERFECT DAY
April 01, 2007 - A gentle summary of a flawless day points the way to bed. Charlip's utterly winning outing begins and ends with a verse about waking and sleeping. In between, father and son, who sport the same honey-colored ringlets, spend the day together doing ...Full Review
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| Crocker, Nancy BILLIE STANDISH WAS HERE
April 15, 2007 - A lonely girl in rural Missouri develops a friendship with her elderly neighbor that transforms her life. Adrift and isolated, 11-year-old Billie Marie has no friends and feels invisible to her self-absorbed parents until she meets her neighbor, ...Full Review
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| Davies, Nicola WHITE OWL, BARN OWL
April 01, 2007 - Few children in the U.S. now have access to the open woodlands and grasslands frequented by barn owls, but they can all enjoy the magic of this bird thanks to this lovely introduction. One winter, a grandfather and his small grandchild (with ...Full Review
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| Demi THE LEGEND OF LAO TZU AND THE TAO TE CHING
April 15, 2007 - Taking on a perfect subject for her ethereal style of illustration, Demi presents episodes from the life of the possibly mythical philosopher, then adds passages from the world-changing book with which he is associated. The art, all painted within ...Full Review
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| DeSaix, Deborah Durland HIDDEN ON THE MOUNTAIN
April 01, 2007 - The people of the small towns and farms in La Montagne Protestante region of Southern France established homes and schools to rescue children fleeing almost certain transport to Nazi concentration camps. They came from all over Europe, and most were ...Full Review
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| Gifford, Peggy MOXY MAXWELL DOES NOT LOVE STUART LITTLE
April 01, 2007 - A chapter-book picaresque hilariously chronicles one day in the life of almost-fourth-grader Moxy Maxwell. From the heretical title to the short chapters, headed in fine 18th-century style ("In Which Moxy Realizes Her Mother Is Home"), and Fisher's ...Full Review
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| Goldberg, Myla CATCHING THE MOON
April 01, 2007 - Can a wily old woman outsmart the Man in the Moon? When a Fisherwoman starts fishing every moon-bright night with a mouse for bait, the only one who worries is the Man in the Moon. One moonless night, she brews tea in her shack when a round-faced ...Full Review
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| Gore, Al AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
April 01, 2007 - A bestselling tie-in book, now adapted for middle- and high-school readers by Jane O'Connor, accompanied the award-winning documentary film about global warming, from Vice President Gore. Gore has contributed a new introduction, and a new table of ...Full Review
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| Gravett, Emily ORANGE PEAR APPLE BEAR
April 15, 2007 - Loose line-and-watercolor illustrations ring the changes on all the possible combinations of the four title words in this deliciously playful romp. A very large, very genial bear first contemplates, then plays with the fruit, first turning orange, ...Full Review
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| Hanson, Mary HOW TO SAVE YOUR TAIL
April 01, 2007 - "If you are a rat nabbed by cats who really like stories about magic spoons, wolves with snout-warts, big, hairy chimney trolls . . . and cookies too," then you'll love this tale of tails. Once upon a time, a rat named Bob lived in a grand castle ...Full Review
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| Jinks, Catherine EVIL GENIUS
April 01, 2007 - Carried along by much peeling back of layers of deception and repeated thickenings of plot, this hefty but engrossingly complex tale features a young super-brain being groomed for world domination. Under the tutelage of his mysterious psychologist ...Full Review
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| Jolin, Paula IN THE NAME OF GOD
April 01, 2007 - In the cramped Damascus apartment 17-year-old Nadia shares with her family, life is tough and getting tougher. While her brothers search unsuccessfully for work, Nadia, attends school. Her fundamentalist Islamic faith and wearing the hijab insulate ...Full Review
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| Lobel, Anita NINI HERE AND THERE
April 15, 2007 - Nini, the cat from One Lighthouse, One Moon (2000), is dismayed when she sees piles of suitcases: Her family is going away—without her! She tries her usual ploys: lying on a suitcase; stretching across a mound of shoes; sitting on the guitar. Then, ...Full Review
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| Manning, Mick COCK-A-DOODLE-HOOOOOOO!
April 15, 2007 - An owl takes over a rooster's role (well, mostly) in this rather ingenuous barnyard episode. Flabbergasted to find an owl roosting among them after a stormy night, most of the henhouse's feathered residents want to drive the stranger away. Though ...Full Review
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| McNeal, Laura THE DECODING OF LANA MORRIS
April 15, 2007 - Sixteen-year-old foster child Lana Morris has a lot of wishes. She wants her conniving foster mother, Veronica, to treat her like a foster daughter rather than a housemaid and a threat. She'd like to be accepted by the local teens, have friends ...Full Review
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| Morales, Yuyi LITTLE NIGHT
April 01, 2007 - Little Night hides and Mother Sky must find her behind the hills, in the bats' cave and in the blueberry field. Then she can give Little Night a bath in falling stars, put her in a dress crocheted from clouds, feed her star milk from the Milky Way ...Full Review
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| Norac, Carl MY MOMMY IS MAGIC
April 01, 2007 - At the end of this enchanting story, the child-narrator declares that when she grows up, "I'm going to be magic too," like her mom. Norac and Gordon celebrate the most magical person in a young child's life and the wonderful things she can do even ...Full Review
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| O'Connor, Jane READY, SET, SKIP!
April 15, 2007 - The narrator of this effervescent exercise in rhyme cannot skip. She can leap, creep, twirl, skate and "BURRRRRRRRRRP!"—but itches to add skipping to her repertoire. Her wise mom asks, "Can you hop?" and, after a perfectly child-calibrated burst of ...Full Review
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| Palatini, Margie THE CHEESE
April 15, 2007 - Asking a question that has no doubt troubled millions of thinking children down through the years—just why should the cheese stand alone?—a rat grabs a napkin and sets off for the big chunk of cheddar that's fenced off down in the dell. On the way, ...Full Review
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| Perkins, Lynn Rae PICTURES FROM OUR VACATION
April 01, 2007 - Newbery-winner Perkins again displays her talent for picking out the telling details in ordinary activities—taking a young narrator and her family on a two-day drive to a now-unused farm for a rain-swept vacation capped by a general gathering of ...Full Review
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| Pow, Tom CAPTIVES
April 15, 2007 - Complex yet accessible, this intriguing adventure story offers unexpected depth. Vacationing on the island of Santa Clara, Martin and his parents are kidnapped along with another family, caught up in the social unrest caused by a greedy, dictatorial ...Full Review
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| Reeve, Philip A DARKLING PLAIN
April 15, 2007 - Taking his cue from "Dover Beach," Matthew Arnold's musing on isolation and anxiety in a world without faith, Reeve delivers a suitably explosive finish to his grueling Hungry City Chronicles. In the wake of the destruction of the Stalker Fang, an ...Full Review
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| Riordan, Rick THE TITAN'S CURSE
April 01, 2007 - The stirring of monsters has begun. Monsters not seen for thousands of years threaten to unleash death and destruction on an unprecedented scale and destroy Olympus, and it's up to Percy Jackson and his friends Grover, Annabeth and Thalia to stop ...Full Review
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| Rubin, Vicky THE THREE SWINGIN' PIGS
April 15, 2007 - Though as big and baaaaaad as ever—"I'm a classic fairy-tale villain," he proudly proclaims—the wolf has no better luck chowing down on jazz-combo piggies Satch, Mo and Ella than he did with their uncles in that other tale. Rendered in the ...Full Review
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| Sherry, Kevin I'M THE BIGGEST THING IN THE OCEAN
April 15, 2007 - Waves of exuberance flow out of this crowd-pleaser, in which a squid proudly points out how much bigger it is than any shrimp, clam, octopus or fish in the neighborhood. Each emphatic, one-line declaration captions a very simple marine scene, ...Full Review
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| Stock, Catherine A PORC IN NEW YORK
April 15, 2007 - Sacre bleu! With Monsieur Monmouton the farmer and his faithful dog Cabot again in hot pursuit, the barnyard crew that enjoyed A Spree in Paree (2004) hie off to the Big Apple. Effectively concealing themselves from Monmouton, but not from readers, ...Full Review
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| Yaccarino, Dan EVERY FRIDAY
April 15, 2007 - It doesn't take expensive gifts and grand gestures to create memorable moments—just a little time. This sweet tribute to the unparalleled connection between parent and child could possibly herald the birth of important traditions in families far and ...Full Review
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