Review of
The Silver Sword,
by Ian Serraillier ISBN 9780590437158
Five out of five stars
While the
family depicted in this book is fictional, their story is one that was mostly true
for millions of people. Unfortunately, in most cases, there was no happy ending
with a joyful reunion. It is the story of the Balicki family, Poles caught up
in the Second World War with the deaths and displacements.
Joseph is the
father and he is sent to a prison camp shortly after the Germans invaded and
conquered Poland. Determined not to let the Germans decide his fate, he manages
to escape and flee to Switzerland. Along the way he is helped by an orphan boy
named Jan and Joseph gives him a small silver sword as a memento.
When their
mother Ruth commits a transgression against the Germans, Storm Troopers come in
the night to whisk her away and their son Edek shoots one of them. Knowing that
the Germans will be back in force and that they will destroy their house, the
three children flee over the rooftops wearing only coats over their bedclothes.
Forced to fend for themselves, they encounter Jan and they recognize the silver
sword that Joseph gave him.
This begins what
can be described as an incredible journey as the children of the Balicki family
travel the hundreds of miles from Poland, through Germany until they are
reunited with their father in Switzerland. The war front passes through their
area and then they must move through the war devastated areas of Poland and
Germany. It is a challenging journey that is an engaging story. It is also one
where parts of it can be used to describe the war experiences of millions of
people in Eastern Europe. Most of which do not end with all family members
surviving the war.
I first read
this book in the Scholastic Books version with the title, “Escape From Warsaw.”
It is an excellent book for young people as it introduces them to a chapter of
history that must be remembered and continues to be repeated in many regions of
the world. At this time, this story can be told with the term “Poles” being
replaced by “Kurds.”
Review of
Out of the Blue: The Remarkable Story of
the 2003 Chicago Cubs, by the staff of the Chicago Tribune
ISBN
1572436336
Four out of five stars
Although the Chicago
Cubs did not make it to the World Series in 2003, they came very close, there
were several “if only” moments. Including one that will live in infamy among
the Cubs faithful. Yet, it was a magical season, for before it started there
were few that gave the Cubs much chance of contending for the title.
Given the
compilers and authors of this book, it is not surprising that the content is
laudatory of all things Cubs. It is packed with the “overcoming adversity”
phraseology so often uttered by athletes and their coaches. Yet, it is a joy to
read, for it was indeed a memorable season for a team that was considered an
unlikely contender before the season began.
The bulk of the
book consists of action shots of the players doing their deeds on the field. It
was exciting to relive a season where the Cubs came so close to a World Series
appearance.
Review of
The Path to the Presidency,
the Concord Monitor ISBN 9781597256148
Five out of five stars
Due to their
being the earliest in the sequence of events leading to the selection of the
next American president, Iowa (population 3.1 million) and New Hampshire
(population 1.4 million), have an outsize influence on who that person will be.
In those states, any person with a desire to see a particular candidate will
almost certainly have the opportunity.
Going back to
the 1960 presidential election, this book contains a set of photos of the
candidates taken by press members of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire.
While most of them are posed and carefully set up, there are some that are completely
unscripted and genuine. There are snowballs flying, a candidate checking his teeth
in the mirror, sampling of the food in a local diner and lots of smiles, both
genuine and somewhat forced.
My favorite is one
of John Kerry talking to a high school class in 2003 and the photo contains the
back of a student where his shirt has the phrase, “You’re mouth keeps moving
but all I hear is ‘Blah, blah, blah.” It was supposedly unplanned, but it is a
photo for the archives of political amusement.
There is method
to the seeming political madness of the caucuses and primaries, the end result
has the highest possible outcome. Therefore, the insights found in this book
have value in any attempt to understand and control the outcome.
Review of
The Giants and the Dodgers: The Fabulous
Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud, by Lee Allen
Five out of five stars
Depending on
how their status as political entities are defined, Brooklyn the previous home
of the Dodgers baseball team and Upper Manhattan, the location of the home
field of the New York Giants, the two teams were either cross-town rivals or
neighboring town rivals. In whatever way you define them, the key point is that
they were rivals. So intense was the hostility, a season where one team won the
majority of the games between them was always considered a success independent
of their position in the final standings.
This book takes
the reader back to the beginning, 1889 to be precise, when the Giants of the
National League faced off against the Brooklyn Bridegrooms of the American
Association in what was a precursor to the playoff we now know as the World Series.
Eventually the Brooklyn team became known as the Dodgers and both of them were
in the National League. Therefore, every year they played each other many times
and were fighting for the same prize, the National League pennant.
A great deal of
the undercurrents of the teams is described, from the ownership issues to those
of managers, coaches, the stars and the less known and even otherwise
insignificant players. There is little in the way of exciting renditions of the
most significant games, the book is essentially a factual recapitulation of the
events. It is a history of the teams and their interactions, a look deep into the
events that made the rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers the foremost
one in sports for so many years.
Review of
Ball Hawks: The Arrival and Departure of
the NBA in Iowa, by Tim Harwood ISBN 9781609385880
Five out of five stars
One of the main
stories about sports in the current news is the fallout from a message posted
by Daryl Morey, general manager of the NBA team the Houston Rockets. In that
message he expressed support for the freedom protests in Hong Kong opposing Chinese
attempts to suppress democracy there. The Chinese government has fought back
hard and billions of dollars of revenue for the NBA is at stake.
Given this modern
context, it is hard for people to comprehend that the NBA was once a small league
where many of the franchises were in small towns. One of those towns was Waterloo,
Iowa, a city that has never had more than 80,000 residents. They were the
Waterloo Hawks and they were a competitive team in the NBA’s first season of
1949-50.
While it is
often dull with routine descriptions of the action with no embellishments, this
book is an educational description of the very early years of professional
basketball. Many of the teams struggled, 3,000 was often considered a large crowd
and the teams sometimes had trouble finding a place to play. Owners often
struggled financially with teams folding in the middle of the season, necessitating
creative adjustments of won-loss records. Like baseball, players often
barnstormed during the off season in an attempt to earn a true living.
This book is a historical
eye-opener to the early days of the NBA, when it was largely a footnote in the
sports consciousness of America and the world. The players, coaches and owners
did not know it at the time, but they were laying the foundation for a business
that now has over $8 billion in revenue per year and so influential that
governments pay attention to what is said.
Review of
Evil
Eye Beagle: Funny Sports Stories,
by Harrison Powers ISBN 0893757039
Three out
of five stars
This collection of short stories is designed
to tickle the funny bones of children ten years old plus-or-minus two. While it
hits the age target, it largely misses the funny one. The plots are all based
on a high degree of incongruity, for example, the first one features a sad-eyed
stray beagle dog that is able to put extreme hexes on people and events. So
severe that the jinxed hockey team loses 48 to zero. Another one has a chimpanzee
so expert at playing checkers and being annoying that people no longer go to
the park where Barney hangs out.
The absurdity of the plots provides a few
light chuckles, but the writing is not light and entertaining enough to sustain
the stories absent the incongruities. It is a good book for a child to read once
and then mentally loose track of it.
Review of
Pythagoras Hi-Q game
Five out of five stars
There are seven
pieces: two large triangles, one intermediate triangle, two small triangles, a
square and a rhombus. The pieces have ridges, so they are easy to grasp for
placement and rotation. The purpose of the game is to construct geometric
shapes from the seven pieces. A paper showing 179 different figures that can be
constructed is included in the package.
As is always
the case with puzzles of this type, there is a significant difference in the difficulty
of creating the figures. For some of them, the placement of a few of the pieces
is immediately clear, giving the player a head start. With others, it is
difficult to see where any of the pieces are to go. Solutions or hints are not
included, but that is not an issue as it is always obvious when you have found an
answer.
This is a game
that will provide you with a lot of challenging mental stimulation (frustration).
Review of
Little League Old-timers,
by Don Creighton
Four out of five stars
Kit Dawson is
in his early teen years and very excited about the upcoming Little League
season. While his team was not very good last year, he has high expectations
for the upcoming season. However, all of his hopes are dashed when ground is
broken for the new shopping center in the location of their baseball field.
There appears
to be no alternative site, Kit and his friends look everywhere in Millbrook for
a location suitable for a baseball field. Somewhat by accident, Kit encounters
a large plot of land that is the Marley Home for the aged. With no resident under
70, they are people that want peace and quiet above else. Therefore, while the
Marley Home residents agree to allow a baseball field to be constructed on
their property, they set very strict rules regarding noise levels. Fans and players
are not allowed to yell and cheer. The season gets started and Kit’s team is an
average one, winning at roughly a .500 pace. Kit proves to be a team leader,
encouraging others and filling in wherever there is the greatest need.
While this
story is based on a season of Little League baseball, it is really about the youth
and elderly reconnecting and finding common ground. One of the rules of the
Marley Home is that to be a resident, you cannot have any relatives. Therefore,
the people there have almost no contact with anyone outside the home. Although
Kit’s team does not win the championship, the real message of this book is that
the elderly need to have a purpose in their lives and interact with others,
specifically the younger generation. There is a touching scene when one of the
elderly women collapses and is rushed to the hospital. When she is recovering,
she asks Kit to visit her and gives him some sage advice about life. Therefore,
this is first and foremost a book about social cohesion rather than baseball.
Review of
HSPT Prep Book 2019-2020: HSPT Study Guide
and Practice Test Questions for the High School Placement Test,
ISBN 9781635303254
Four out of five stars
It is an
unfortunate fact of life in the modern world of growing up that your
performance on a single test can do a great deal to determine your future. From
where you are placed among your peers to your entrance into the school of your
choice. One of the significant early tests is the High School Placement Test or
HSPT. It is taken by students about to enter the ninth grade or what is in the
United States, the first year of high school. If you do well on the HSPT, then
you will be placed into the college preparation track, which is often key to
your future education.
This book contains
some review material, but there are heavy assumptions regarding previous
exposure and understanding. The reviews are short and very to the point. There
are exams with questions that require some significant thought, which is the
proper level of challenge. It would be very counterproductive to give easy questions
on a study exam.
If your child
is someone about to take the HSPT, then acquiring this book and using it as a
study aid is a cheap and effective way to improve their chances to earn the
score that will give them an edge. However, it is hardly original or unique in
the approach.
Review of
Jed: The Story of a Yankee Soldier and a
Southern Boy, by Peter Burchard
Five out of five stars
Jed is a
soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He lied about his age
in order to be allowed to join and he is now far from his home in Wisconsin and
sixteen years old. He is a veteran of the battle of Shiloh Creek and his unit
is now in Mississippi and it is the fall of 1862. As experiencing the death and
destruction of a battle will do to a person, “all the glitter and promise had
gone out of soldiering.”
Yet, there is
still a spark of idealism in Jed and it is rekindled when he encounters a local
boy that has wandered away from home and has broken his leg. Even though the
boy is hostile to the Yankee soldier Jed, he takes pity on the boy and moves
him to the surgeon for his unit. The bone is set and bound in place. The boy
wants to return home so the surgeon loans Jed his horse for the return trip, as
the boy cannot walk.
The Union Army
often ran low on supplies, so they made do by living off the land. Which meant
that they often simply took livestock and foodstuffs from the local farms at
gunpoint, leaving the people to starve. Jed was a participant in one such raid
and it greatly disturbed him, he vowed to never go on such missions again
unless he was ordered.
With the help
of some of the kindly men in his unit, Jed is able to successfully return the
boy to his mother and then thwart an attempt to pillage their farm without being
disloyal to the Union cause. This is a good story about a boy/man that keeps his
ethical and moral principles while others have the heat of battle destroy
theirs.
Review of
You Can Tell You’re a Midwesterner When .
. . , by Dale Grooms ISBN 9781571662170
Four out of five stars
This is a book
of rural “wisdom,” a collection of generally folksy sayings that are a
combination of the frivolous and profound. Nearly all of the sayings begin with
a “..ya” although a few begin with “you” or “yer.” They are often deliberately grammatically
incorrect in an attempt to make them sound more folksy.
As a former Iowa
country boy, I found the first one on page 24 to be one of the most amusing:
“.. ya know what it feels like to whiz on an electric fence.”
In general, country boys can be divided into two
categories, those that did take a whiz on an electric fence and those that
convinced another boy to go first.
Published in
Iowa, this book is meant to be a frivolous exaggeration of how rural Iowans talk
and act. In that sense, this book succeeds, although some may be put off by the
deliberately poor grammar.
Review of
Pencil Puzzlers,
by Steve Ryan ISBN 0806985429
Five out of five stars
The puzzles in
this collection are hard, but in general all that is needed to solve them is persistence
rather than mathematical insight. Although the title hints that the puzzles are
those of finding a specific path through a maze, that is not always the case.
There are puzzles involving letters in words, determining the values of unseen
numbers, a crossword puzzle that uses all 26 letters one time and using
straight lines to split a diagram into congruent pieces. The puzzles are
challenging, and hints are often given a few pages ahead. Answers to all
puzzles are included in an appendix.
Math skills or
insight are not needed to solve these puzzles, they are solved using systematic
trial and error. Therefore, people of all ages can use this book to sharpen the
edges of their brain cells.
Review of
Daddy’s Little Girl: For Dads and Little
Girls of All Ages, by Donna Reed
Five out of five stars
This
heartwarming story is a common one. A loving father is forced to work long hours
in order to pay the bills and therefore his daughter rarely sees him as she is
growing up. It is something that is always foremost in her mind and she is now
older.
Forty years
have passed, and she has acquired two tickets to the University of Iowa versus
Purdue University basketball game. Instead of asking a friend, she calls up her
dad and asks him to go with her. He agrees and their sharing of the activity
rekindles and reinforces a bond between them.
The story then
quite correctly points out that little girls of all ages need much more than
food on the table and a better way of life. However, this point of emphasis
does leave a bit of reality behind. It is easy to point this out, yet for many
it is much harder to carry it out. For a large number of people, not working
those extra hours means that decisions have to be made regarding what bill is
not paid that month.
This book was
published in 1994 and for the majority of people in the United States, their
wages have stagnated since then. It is not their fault and they are often faced
with two options. Bankruptcy or working longer and harder. Loving parents will
always choose the latter.
Review of
Child Ward of the Commonwealth,
by Eileen Cleary ISBN 9781599487465
Four out of five stars
One of the
realities of the world is that there are some children that simply should not
remain in the custody of their parents. Almost anything is better than the
environment they are living in. Unfortunately, the alternatives that they often
find themselves in are not much better. While most have improved from the
conditions many years ago, orphanages are still in general rather dismal
places. Granted that foster care is generally better, it can often be a stark
existence where the child is tolerated rather than loved and cared for.
The author of
this collection of poems had a childhood that was an incident of that reality,
and the short segments of verse describe some of her experiences. There is
nothing horrific such as an explicit sexual assault documented in this
collection, although it is clear that there was the potential. Many of the
poems describe an emptiness, the child survives to adulthood, yet the childhood
years were not ones of happiness and healthful play.
For example,
the short poem on page 31:
“We carry, like a dead baby, our unfinished love. A
thing outlived. Holy. Yet dreadful. Through awkward centuries of November,
shapeless days assemble.”
The poems in
this collection are not uplifting, or even a song of triumph over childhood adversity.
They are metaphorical allusions to a childhood that is remembered, but not
fondly.
Review of
The Joys of a Simple Life,
by Elmarie Novak
Four out of five stars
The author grew
up in the area of Spillville, Iowa and this book is a collection of short
recollections she has of her life in the years 1924-1934. She is of Czech
Catholic heritage, which is fitting for Spillville is the home of the oldest
Czech Catholic Church in the United States. Her family lived on a farm and
while they had a personal electric power system run by batteries and a
recharging generator, the house was heated by woodburning stoves and water was
derived from cisterns for storage and hand pumps for delivery.
Like all such
farm families, the people worked very hard, yet they always ate very well and
enjoyed life. There was a tight bond of family and community among the people,
one of the essays is about when an entire family was stricken with the flu and quarantined.
The author’s family did their farm chores as well as those of the stricken
family and bought their groceries, setting them on the porch in order to avoid physical
contact.
Like the title,
the writing is also fairly simple, there are errors and some repetition. Yet,
the points are well made, although they lacked a lot, the family and the
community described in this book had many things that modern people no longer
have. I would describe their lives as “uncomplicated” rather than simple.
Review of
On the Ropes: A Novel,
by James Vance and Dan E. Burr ISBN 9780393351224
Five out of five stars
This graphic
novel is based on a lot of history, much of which is no longer heavily
emphasized in the educational curricula. The setting is the United States in
1937, where the Depression is still heavy and even the employed struggle to
make ends meet. Large corporations do not hesitate to hire thugs to beat up
union organizers and some of those doing the beating wore police and National
Guard uniforms. Major newspapers, the only real mass media outlet at the time,
often took the side of the companies, claiming that people fighting for a union
and decent wages were “Reds,” the common term for communists at the time.
The main
character is Fred Bloch, a young man that lost his leg in a train accident and
has found what passes for a home in a traveling circus funded by the WPA. He is
apprenticed to Gordon Corey, an escape artist that has shackles put on his arms,
a hangman’s rope around his neck and then at the count of five the trap door
under his feet is opened. Although Gordon is clearly a man on the edge of
self-destruction, he always manages to carry out his daring escape.
There is a
great deal of labor strife and Fred is associated with a national organization
of labor organizers. He is a message runner and is being stalked by two
ruthless men employed by the corporations. They will not hesitate to kill to
carry out their mission, and that includes the brutal slaughter of women that
go contrary to their wishes.
This is a tough
graphic novel, yet it revisits the days of the Depression when workers striking
for union recognition and higher pay were killed, some of which were women marching
in solidarity with the men. It is also important for the current generations to
understand that the Depression was an extremely tough time and standing up for your
worker rights could mean getting beaten or shot. It is a book that could be
used in history classes in order to provoke discussion and further research and
a reminder of the past struggles of labor.
Review of
Snap Me Perfect! The Darrell Porter Story,
by Darrell Porter with William Deerfield ISBN 0840753675
Four out of five stars
This
autobiography of Darrell Porter, an admitted alcoholic and drug addict, appears
to have a happy ending, as it ends with him clean and a born-again Christian.
Out of curiosity, I investigated his life after this book was written and
learned that he died in 2002 at the age of 50. An autopsy revealed a level of
cocaine in his body “consistent with recreational use.” Therefore, it is clear
that he was never able to defeat demon coke.
Although Porter
played 17 seasons in the major leagues and had some outstanding seasons, a
strong argument can be made that he would be in the Hall of Fame if he had not
been under the influence most of the time. In 1979 he led the majors with 121
walks and scored and batted in over 100 runs. Feats where the only other
catchers to accomplish them are in the Hall of Fame.
This would be a
better book of Porter had not descended to the level of seeking pity, often
blaming his father for being unloving. Some of that is no doubt due to the fact
that Porter never had to experience the issues of struggling for money. Many
children of working-class parents that struggle to make ends meet resent their
parents until they themselves are in that situation. Only then, do the appreciate
what their parents did and sacrificed for them. Porter signed for a major bonus
right out of high school, so lack of income was never an issue for him.
As you read
this book, you are amazed that Porter was able to function as a star at the
major league level. He claims that he strictly controlled his intake, but that
is a delusion that is easy to see through. He describes being so paranoid and
delusional that he kept a loaded shotgun near his bed and found conspiracies
against him in chance encounters with people.
A natural
athlete that was so gifted that he received multiple offers from NCAA football
powerhouses as a quarterback, Porter could have been one of the greatest of all
time. Yet, his significant feelings of insecurity and inadequacy were so strong
that they were the stepping-stone to his drug use in an attempt to cope. This book
is one that will make you sad, even more so because his story is not unique.
Review of
A Coloring Book of Ancient China,
Bellerophon Books ISBN 0883880776
Five out of five stars
This is both
educational and a challenging coloring book for adults. The images are from works
created in ancient China and are composed of many tiny details, giving the
artist an essentially infinite number of possibilities to develop. Most of the pictures
are copies of museum pieces and there is a short caption of text giving the message
of the image as well as the origin and current location.
There are many
ways in which to study history and learn about other cultures. While this book
is not for everyone, it certainly is a worthy object of study and artistic activity.
Review of
The Blue Ribbon Day,
by Katie Couric ISBN 0385501420
Five out of five stars
The theme of
this children’s book is how to bravely face failure and use it as a learning
experience and as a way to move on to other things that may be more suited to
your physical and mental skills. Ellie McSnelly and Carrie O’Toole are friends
at Brookhaven School. They get very excited when they see a sign announcing
tryouts for soccer.
When the
workout is in progress, Ellie demonstrates significant skills at the game while
Carrie has trouble making contact with the ball. When the roster is announced,
Ellie has made the team while Carrie has not. After shedding tears of
disappointment, Carrie decides to enter the school science fair. Her project is
the use of sugar solution to make blue rock candy, and her project does so well
that she wins a blue ribbon. Demonstrating to the reader that there are many
types of skills, what a person needs to do is discover which ones they have and
learn how to leverage them to success.
The text is
written in four-line segments, where lines 1 and 2 and then 3 and 4 rhyme. All rhymes
are simple and can be understood by the student in the middle of elementary
school. The illustrations are colorful and depict a lot of action with intense
facial expressions.
This is a good
book for children, the theme is about life and how the manner in which we face
and respond to disappointment determines whether we will be successful or not.
I strongly recommend it for all children.
Review of
Manners in Public,
by Carrie Finn ISBN 9781404831537
Five out of five stars
There are many
simple ways in which a person can grease the operations of social cohesion, many
of them are called “manners.” This book covers many of the basic ones, such as
saying “please” and “thank you” to others. Other simple actions are taking your
proper place in line in public places, staying quiet in educational places such
as libraries and museums and always putting your trash into the proper receptacle.
Written at the
level of the early elementary school student and illustrated with people that
have large round heads with long and extremely skinny necks, this is a book
that will start the child on the road to being a good and kindly citizen.
Something that there can never be enough of.
Review of
Dolley Madison Saves George Washington,
by Don Brown ISBN 9780544582446
Five out of five stars
Courageous when others were not
One of the
unverified statements of history is that Zachary Taylor was the first person to
use the term “First Lady” to describe Dolley Madison, the wife of President
James Madison. The phrase supposedly appeared in Taylor’s eulogy of Dolley Madison,
one of the most popular presidential wives of all time. She was elegant,
dignified and worthy of the role.
However, this book
is about her courage and resilience. When the British were marching on
Washington, D. C. in 1814, the soldiers that were assigned to guard the capitol
had all fled, along with nearly everyone else. When a messenger on a horse came
charging in and said the British would be there shortly, she did not panic.
Instead she ordered men to break the frame holding the painting of George Washington
and entrusted the painting to two leading citizens. Only then did she leave Washington
to be burned by the British forces.
Dolley
disguised herself as a simple farm girl so that she could successfully evade
the British and avoid negative comments from Americans sick of the war. Once
the war was over, she went back to being elegant and dignified. One of the most
impressive women of American history, this book describes her courage under
fire, both literally and figuratively.
Review of
Noah Webster & His Words,
by Jeri Chase Ferris ISBN 9780544582422
Five out of five stars
The subject
matter of this book makes it highly educational, for it is something obvious
after the fact. Yet it is a topic that is rarely considered. It is the
existence of a unified system of how words are to be spelled and defined.
Noah Webster
was the author of the first comprehensive dictionary of American English and it
was responsible for codifying how words were written and used. Some of the most
popular dictionaries are still written under his name hundreds of years after
the publication of the first one. If you allow for the regular revisions,
Webster’s dictionary is the second most popular book ever printed in English.
This story of
Webster’s life and ambitions is very well written and illustrated. He was a man
with a mission, it took him decades to complete his dictionary, the first
edition was not published until 1828, after twenty years of editing and
proofreading. Yet, he always knew that he was writing a classic, a book that
generations of students would rely on and sometimes grow to hate. There were
many times when I was in elementary school that the teacher would tell us, “Look
in the dictionary.” Add this book to the list of those that are must reads for
elementary school children.
Review of
The Road Warrior,
starring Mel Gibson
Five out of five stars
This remains
one of the best action/disaster movies of all time. The climactic chase scene with
orchestrated mayhem involving all of the vehicles still amazes me after seeing
it more times than I have fingers and toes. I also consider it Mel Gibson’s
greatest performance as Mad Max, a man with apparently no heart and a killer
that remains an honorable man.
The setting is the
Australian outback in a post-apocalyptic world where brutal gangs rule,
pillaging and destroying all that is not part of their organization. Gasoline
is called “juice” and is the most precious commodity. Multiple lives will be
spent in order to acquire a few gallons.
The ultimate prize
is a permanent location over an oil well where the inhabitants are refining and
storing the fuel. A gang led by a man called Lord Humungus has the site under
siege and time is running out on the inhabitants. Their goal is to break out
and travel over 2,000 miles to a place of fresh water and greenery. To them, it
is paradise.
Even though the
performance of Gibson is first rate, the roles of the supporting characters are
strong and at times more effective than Gibson. Bruce Spence plays the gyro
captain, a man that flies a gyrocopter powered by a VW engine that is
air-cooled, which reduces the weight. While he is not much of a warrior, he is easily
overpowered by Max, he remains a man with a sense of humor and is in his own
way very capable. One of the best scenes is when he wipes his mouth in the
manner of a fine diner after eating dog food out of a can.
Another strong
performance is put in by Vernon Wells as Wez, a psychotic member of the
Humungus gang. When his boy toy is killed, he goes out of control to the point
that Humungus puts him in chains. To many, the most memorable character is the
Feral Kid, a young boy that lives near the permanent compound, communicates by
grunts and growls, moves in and out of the compound via tunnels and sports a
deadly metal boomerang.
This is a movie
that you can watch many times and suddenly spot a feature that you never noticed
before. As someone that has studied ways in which civilization can be restored
after a global disaster, I pay attention to ways in which the good side could
better fight back against the Humungus gang. A gasoline bomb catapult always
comes to mind.
Review of
Alice in Wonderland: An Illustrated
Journey Through Time, by Mark Salisbury ISBN 9781484737699
Five out of five stars
This is not a
history of the story of what is probably the most well-known fictional
character, it is a more targeted history of how she has been portrayed in Disney
productions. Using text and images that are both live and animated, the author
tells the story of how the original idea of making an animated Alice movie came
about and how the portrayals evolved and developed through several iterations.
The early days
of Disney are explained, when times were lean, and it was uncertain whether there
would ever be any Alice production at all. It is impossible not to be impressed
by the quality of the artwork. The reader also learns some of the specific
details of animation, there are images of live characters performing the
actions that will eventually be carried out in animation.
For example, on
page 77 there is a picture of a young actress playing large Alice inside the White
Rabbit’s home. On page 76 there is an image of two dancers performing
live-action reference footage for the Tweedledum and Tweedledee dance sequence.
This is an
excellent book about the history and technical aspects of the production of the
Alice movies by the Disney company. Some aspects of it could serve as instructional
material for courses in the making of animated movies.
Review of
Shoeless Joe & Me, by Dan Gutman ISBN
9780064472593
Five out of five stars
One of the
great unfortunate events of major league baseball is the case of the man known
as Shoeless Joe Jackson. While he was otherwise intelligent, he was completely illiterate
to the point of not even being able to sign his name. Yet, he was likely one of
the most naturally talented players of all time. His throwing arm may have been
the best to ever appear, there are confirmed legends as to how far he could
throw a baseball.
Even though no
one ever made a credible claim that Jackson did anything to throw the 1919
World Series, he was caught up in the scandal and banned from baseball for
life. His “crime” was having knowledge of the attempt to lose and not reporting
it. Which was incorrect, for he did report it to the owner of the White Sox at
the time, the notorious tightwad Charles Comiskey.
This story once
again has the title character (Joe Stoshack) capable of traveling back and
forth through time by clutching period baseball cards. His subject this time is
Shoeless Joe Jackson and his actual role in the Black Sox scandal. It is a
great history of this event, anyone with knowledge of the case understands that
a great injustice was done to Joe Jackson and he deserves to be in the baseball
Hall of Fame.
The Gutman
books are an excellent way to learn baseball history, they set aside the legends
and deal with the facts of the players. If you don’t come away from reading
this book thinking that Joe Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame, then you
have no heart. For it is clear that he was an innocent man caught up in a storm
of “throwing the rascals out.”
Review of
The First Strawberries,
by Joseph Bruchac ISBN 9780425287477
Five out of five stars
This Cherokee
fable is retold in a delightful and informative way. It has an Adam and Eve
type plot, but with a happy ending, even though it involves a fruit, specifically
strawberries. It opens with the sentence, “Long ago when the world was new, the
Creator made a man and a woman.”
When the man
comes home from hunting and supper is not ready because the woman is picking
flowers, he is angry. As a consequence, the woman simply walks away at a rapid
pace. Unable to match her speed, the man falls behind and the sun takes pity on
him. After several tries with known fruits and berries, the sun creates a new
fruit, the strawberry. Unable to resist the temptation, the woman stops to pick
and eat. All is forgiven and from that point on the Cherokee have a new source
of seasonal fruit.
The artwork is excellent,
and the text is written at the level of early elementary school. This book
would be an excellent addition to elementary school libraries, and I would have
read it to my daughter when she was young.
