Awards Books

I highly recommend this book to readers of all ages who want to know more about Louise Bourgeois and her work. It's beautifully designed, straight-forward, full of information, and inspring.

As you read RUNAWAY GIRL, a beautifully-crafted book that illuminates Louise Bourgeois's story, it is impossible not to keep your eyes on the art. The book is absolutely saturated with vivid photographs of the ninety-two year-old artist's work, as well as a progression of photos of Louise throughout a life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century and has continued on into the new millennium. Louise's story--from a childhood in France to an apartment in Manhattan--encompasses family, creativity, and personal evolution, as well as her historic role in breaking down sexual barriers in the art world.

But what makes RUNAWAY GIRL such an important piece of nonfiction for young adults is that unique peek at the psychological roots of an artist's creativity. Greenberg & Jordan provide the perfect measure of Louise's early years in order for us to understand those roots without ever getting bogged down in extraneous detail. The extensive access to her inner life that this controversial artist has granted the authors and their readers makes the book inspiring and unique. I didn't expect to enjoy a book about some female artist I'd never heard of before, but to find out why some two-story-high spiders represent her mother and herself totally captivated me.

"From one of Louise Bourgeois's journals:

The Runaway Girl who never grew up.
I need no support nor comfort.
I need no safety net, no breakfast.
No lunch or tea, no visitors, no telephone calls nor little messages.
No little concerts, no hype, or encouragement for big projects.
No ambitions, no spying on my neighbors.
I need nothing...I can wait, I am not afraid, I am an adult.
Nothing is lacking."

It is also fascinating to see little snippets of the artist at work. For instance, the authors describe her creation of one of my favorite pieces of her art:

"She would go back to [the marble quarries in] Pietranta many times in the sixties and again in the eighties. Jerry Gorovoy, who accompanied her on one such trip, says there wasn't much time for sightseeing. They arrived at their hotel in the evening and instead of going to a restaurant or walking around town, she insisted on getting right to work. Jerry says that Louise had a hard time relaxing. 'If you take her to the beach, she can sit still for about five minutes. Then she gets restless.' Unfortunately, Louise hadn't packed any art supplies--no clay, wax or Plasticine. So she asked Jerry for the shirt off his back. She folded and shaped it, stitching the cotton into position until she was satisfied with the form. The next day at the quarry she changed the design somewhat, then applied gesso, a liquid plaster, to harden the fabric. A larger, marble version was measured and roughed out by the craftsmen at the quarry according to her specifications. Then it was shipped to the studio [in Brooklyn], where, upon her return, she carefully reworked it with a chisel. Eventually Jerry's shirt evolved into Femme Maison, 1983, a fresh interpretation of her familiar subject."

RUNAWAY GIRL concludes with a variety of useful resources, including "How to Look at a Sculpture," and "Where to View Artwork by Louise Bourgeois," as well as an expansive glossary, a bibliography, and a chronological listing of her work.

" What happens next? That is her main focus. And so she stays at home on Twentieth Street, spinning her memories, fantasies, and ideas into art. Free with her thoughts and feelings, up to a point, she lets us know that there are other secrets, other ideas and thoughts to consider about her, about her work. 'I'm a long distance runner. I'm a lonely runner and that's the way I like it.' "

It was a delight to "meet" Louise. Long may she run.

This book was sent to me by a friend who knows I collect children's books. I had never heard of Hudson Talbott before, nor had I heard of this book.

It's fabulous! Safari Journal will appeal to both girls and boys ages 7 to 15, as well some adults. My 5 year old daughter asked me to read it the day it arrived, and she sat through the whole story, although it was quite a long story for a 5 year old! (I'm not so sure this would be typical, though.)

I love the photographs, the innovative way factual information is interwoven within a funny, adventureous story and the feeling that you are reading the actual journal of this 12 1/2 year old.

Side note: If you've ever been to Disney World's Animal Kingdom Lodge and liked it, you'll LOVE this book. It highlights the same animals you'll see there and the same people that are showcased in the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

This Book is a great innovative book that is a 12 1/2 year old's fictious journal of his African Safari. There is action, adventure, humor and factual information about african animals, Swahili words, Massai people and wildlife preserves in Africa.

It's the most innovative children's book I've seen in a long time and will appeal to any child between the ages of 6 and 15. DON'T HESITATE -- BUY THIS BOOK! (you won't regret it!)

Salvation Blues collects 100 of Rodney Jones's best poems, culling material from Kingdom of the Instant, Elegy for the Southern Drawl (his best book), Things That Happen Once, Transparent Gestures, Apocalyptic Narrative, and The Unborn. (Only poems from his first book, The Story They Told Us of Light, are omitted), and adding what would have amounted to an entire book's worth of new poems.

There is no poet working today who is better with narrative, and no poet who can wring so much lyric intensity out of narrative material. This book is a good showcase of Jones's material, and a great place for a new reader to begin reading him. For longtime readers, the new poems are reason enough to want to own the book.

Salvation Blues is testament to twenty years of some of the most devilish, intelligent, and humane letters you can find in contemporary poetry. Rodney Jones writes with an honest voice driven by both condemnation and joy for the world's shortcomings and marvels. This is a book to send to anyone who doesn't believe poetry can change the way you think and feel about the world around you.

The Santero's Miracle is a very sweet story that captures the culture and traditions of Northern New Mexico. The persons who carve saints (santeros) are highly regarded here. Many families have a multi-generational tradition of carving.

This story illustrates the unique culture that developed in the remote mountains of Northern New Mexico. This is a rare place in America.

The illustrations are exquisite. It doesn't matter what religious tradition the reader practices -- this is a story for everyone.

Award-winning author and illustrator team Rudolfo Anaya and Amy Cordova present The Santero's Miracle: A Bilingual Story, an English/Spanish Christmas tale about the power of miracles. Don Jacobo is teaching his visiting grandson Andres how to become a santero; the two of them are working on a carving of San Isidro, the patron saint of farmers. Due to the great snowfall, Andres' parents cannot come home in time for the holiday, and don Jacobo's neighbor, don Leopoldo, is severely ill but cannot reach the hospital. Then don Jacobo dreams of a miracle: San Isidro plowing with two oxen and and an angel helping. The meaning of the dream brings about a reminder of the power of compassion, faith, and love. The bright color illustrations practically leap off the page in this joyful and uplifting story meant to be shared.

I read this book when I think I was in grade 6 or 7th back in 1985 or so . Infact this was my first novel and after that I read it at least 4-5 times.As I read this book I felt as everything is happening in front of me just a right mix of suspence/drama for the kids brain. but I am sure even today I can read it in 2 days. I would definitely get this for my daughter in next couple of years.

This is Enid Blyton at her best. I read this book in grade 5, almost 30 years ago, and I still remembered the title to search for it for my own kids. This was a book I just couldn't put down. A recent visit to the rugged coast of southwest England brought the memories of this book flooding back. Even though I'd never seen such coastline at the age of 10, I could imagine it well from her vivid descriptions.

This book is great. It is aimed for the age groupe 9-12, but infact i still find it intesting at 14 years old. It is an adventure/mystery about seven children who start saving money to buy fireworks. Peter, Janet, Pam, Colin, George, Jack and Barbara are collecting old clothes and money, but then everything is stolen! Who could have done this? Could it be Jack's little sister and her gang? Could it have something to do with the nearby robery? I'm not giving anything away, you will just have to read it for yourself. You wont regret buying it, I'll tell you that for a fact. I give it a fab 10/10

Reviewer: c.f. Thomas from Taupo New Zealand.
This book is great. It is aged for 9-12, but I find good for 8 year olds. It's an adventure/mystery about five children who have just recoverd from a bad case of measles. They take a trip to a bird island in the middle of the sea. Their 2 pets Huffin and Puffin are Puffins. The children go to an island which they make their headquarters. I am not going to tell you any more as it will spoil the story. You need to read it yourself as it is great reading I would give it 10/10

This book has given me a great deal of insight into my personal life. It is very interesting and kept my interest throughout the entire book. And he is sooooooo cute!!!!!!!!

Corey Anton's work is rich account of the unique and once occurent ways self and world emerge into meaningful existence. Springing forth from Charles Taylor's, The Ethics of Authenticity, Anton provides a compelling account of selfhood that furthers the modern quest for authenticity, that is, the sense that "many people today feel that it is their right to live personally meaningful lives." Keeping at bay two responses people might take in regard to this quest, as a license for moral laxity or as a moral calling for poetic license, Anton makes recourse to the dialogical nature of self and the requirements of horizons of significance.
With a critical eye towards overly atomistic accounts of self in social scientific research, Dr. Anton, taking up the voice of existential phenomenology, describes the ways the self is primordially out side of its fleshy boundaries thrown into a meaningful world with others. As a matter of emphasis on this insight, Anton provides lucid descriptions of essential features of self: embodiment, sociality, symbolicity, and temporality.

The following are some highlights of the work.

The opening section on embodiment represents an almost mythical account of the body. Here Anton writes of the ground meaning of embodiment as being "thrown-out-from-yet-indigenous-to-earth." And, following Sartre's account of Being-in-itself, he writes "Earth as Earth is a non-existing event...as so full of itself, it exists not." If Earth is to fall into existence it will require "events of existential decompression." As Anton continues, "an embodied self is earth's way of taking flight from its fullness and first coming to itself...humans are not simply things on the earth; we are something it is doing." This section dives further into the phenomenological notion of intentionality, ala Merleau-Ponty, and concludes with the observation: nothing separates my body from the world.

The subject of negativity, of nothing, runs through out the work as a reminder of the self's dialogical/inseparable relation to world and others. For instance, in the chapter on sociality, Anton not only acknowledges that "hortatory don'ts" and "tribal thou shall nots" (a nod to Kenneth Burke) provide social regulations of appropriateness and acceptability, but he also delineates the primordial negativity implicit in face-to-face encounters. Anton writes, "My face as it is for me, is an intentional absence, yet it is the absence by which others' faces come to seeable existence. I do not have a face; other people have mine and I have theirs. Ridged boundaries between others and self need to be loosened because part of me is manifest only through others. Said simply: nothing separates me from others."

Nothing separating world, self, and others means that all talk is talk about others and the world. Hence, in the chapter on symbolicity Anton's account of self turns towards sonorousness (i.e. speech and language). Anton writes, "Human beings are naturally sonorous entities, caring for more than the here and now of their own bodies by releasing and appropriating the sayableness of existence." Being critical of those who would conceive speech and language as inventions, tools, or an unnatural add on to the human being, Anton maintains that such conceptions that hold the belief "that language is alien or not natural (perhaps humanly created) must be carefully scrutinized."

Of the various features of the self temporality is perhaps the most under appreciated in contemporary social theory. "It is so easy to forget (or never even notice) that we are temporality," writes Anton. "The human is more than extant, is not simply a body resting `in' time...World [and] self are happening through earth's internal negations and corresponding existential decompressions." In revealing the meaning of freedom in human beings relation to time, he sums up: "humans are time as temporality, which means that the past remains a future possibility; this is the past we are still moving toward. What we normally call the future is actually the past; it is the past that will-have-been."

The whole of Selfhood and Authenticity provides a compelling account of self that is indebted to others and world. The pursuit of authenticity with in the context of Anton's work, is struggle to meet fitting responses to and from the project of existence. "What could be less original, less authentic, than a job, any and every task, done with less than vital concern?" The inauthentic person is lacking a sense of duty, and harbors an indifference to the moments of existence. Authenticity, in Anton's last account, is a passionate responsibility, "a practice of openness by which we are called to fitting responses...a blissfully seduced obedience...a dutiful autonomy, one liberated by indebtedness."

The excerpt consists largely of the musings of the protagonist and they're interesting enough to draw the reader in and make him want more. The writing is fluid and uncluttered; the dialogue's good.

I particularly liked the bit of foreshadowing at the close of Chapter One.

I shouldn't have enjoyed the slow start to this story, but I did. It made a wonderful job of introducing us to Ben Shilling, an entirely sympathetic character, and to his reasonably empty but contented life as the creative director of a Dallas advertising agency. The peripheral character sitting beside him for the opening plane trip from L.A. to Dallas (was it Bollander?) who allows him to unfold his amusing and laid-back personality for us, is a cameo character painted in delightful brush-strokes. At least, I presume he is a cameo, and we are never going to meet this guy again.

Ben's girlfriend Jill is also a nice girl, and they are good together, if not engaged in a grand passion. All seems hunky-dory in Ben's life, with his job going fine and his marriage break-ups far enough behind him to seem more amusing than tragic, but hearing about all this is not in the least boring. Ben's personality is such that you'd be glad to have him entertain you on a wet afternoon.

But now, following a slightly long-winded description of Ben's past career and how he got to be a partner in this agency (SELL), we seem to have come to the crunch. Something is happening at the agency (which was in line for a merger with some big boys) and, unfortunately, I am not to know what it is, because at this point the excerpt has ended. My only hope is that this book will win the competition so that I can buy it in the shops and find out. I'm rooting for it, anyway.

Robert Burleigh's Seurat And La Grande Jatte is a very different kind of children's picture book -- it is an appreciation of a classic painting, "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884", which was created with the remarkable art style of pointilism (painting with dots) by the talented and dedicated French artist Seurat. Details and reproductions of this remarkable work (as well as other compositions by Seurat), superbly background the scene it portrays and deftly enhances the narrative musings into the life of the hard-working artist which fill the pages of this marvelous children's book which is especially recommended for talented youngsters who themselves have a flair for art.

The author has done a brilliant job crafting a book that appeals to elementary age students. I am an art teacher and used this as my primary resource when introducing Georges Seurat and Pointillism. There is just enough biographical information thrown in to benefit the students, but not so much it bores them. Fantastic examination of the painting and explanation of the process involved in making this piece. Wonderful!

A character study, a novel of historical fiction, an young adult's introduction to foreign culture, or a bold little step in the story of gender equality -- it does not matter why this book was read or how someone chose to categorized it; it succeeds on all fronts.

A little glimpse into the world of a late-18th century Libyan 12-year-old girl is, by no means, an oversaturated subject matter in the world of books these days (if ever!). It is, however, perhaps all the more reason to pick it up. This is unexplored territory for almost every reader, and THE SHADOWS OF GHADAMES should not disappoint any of them.

The story of Malika is character-driven with an engaging, fresh plotline that showcases the inserted "you've never been here before" set of facts about cultural, religious, culinary and societal customs that don't seem forced, thank God. The introduction of what might seem to be uncomfortable subject matter like polygamy is handled beautifully, if not artfully, and it is absolutely clear to me that the author truly respects all of her characters.

Part of the success of this work is also due to Catherine Temerson's magnificent translation that is alive with beautiful, poetic language. Her work (translated from the original French) has nuance and energy, and is a delight to read.

I recommend this book for whatever reason you can find to pick it up, particularly because of the contrast you'll find with our current technological world. Today's students (at least mine) demand that things happen for them and that they're entertained, and for them there is little satisfaction in quiet, thoughtful solitude. As a contrast to the "I'm SOOO bored," mantra of today's youth, I think we really need our children to develop perspective and alternatives to the ever-present materialism and noise of 2007. THE SHADOWS OF GHADAMES is an excellent introduction to that lesson.

A bit of context. When I reviewed "Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind" (a tale about a Pakistani nomadic daughter and her struggle against repression), I characterized it as a slow moving epic. The kind of thing that kids should read but that if you forced it down their gullets they'd immediately detest. And though "The Shadows of Ghadames" is similar to "Shabanu" in a number of ways, I simply cannot repeat this advice. Here we have a small, unassuming, but brilliantly succinct encapsulation of the maturity of a young woman in late nineteenth century southern Libya. The book is fascinating and short, but says everything in its mere 118 pages that needs to be said. Unlike some historical fiction novels written for children, I'll be recommending this book to any and every kid I see. It's an infinitely interesting look at a world unlike our own but can (as "Shabanu" author Suzanne Fisher Staples says in her blurb on the back of the book), "explore universal truths about the condition of being human".

Once again Malika's father is taking off from the city of Ghadames to sell his wares to lands distant from his daughter's home. As a girl, Malika is finding the freedoms she experienced as a child curtailed with the approach of puberty. Soon she will be condemned to remain on the rooftops of the city where all the women live, like her mother and her father's second wife Bilkisu. Malika challenges a society where she isn't allowed to learn to read and where the only garden she'll soon be seeing is the red one painted on the walls of the roofs. It isn't long before such brooding is changed to fear, however, when she and Bilkisu discover an injured man, hunted by the townspeople for preaching a different religion. Without Malika's father around, the women take it upon themselves to hide and tend to the wounded man. Through this act of kindness, Malika grows to learn more about the world of the women, far above the ground, and what they are truly capable of in spite of their entrapment.

It was with great shock that I reached the end of this book, only to discover that "The Shadows of Ghadames" has been translated from the original text to what we read here. Originally the work of French author Joelle Stolz, the prose is lyrical and fascinating, without the stilted sentences that sometimes pepper a translated work. Better still, this book is interesting from page one onwards. There's a thrilling blindfolded race across a roof, lurid descriptions of the celebrations women have on their own, and complicated relations that never rely on black and white stereotypes. In most novels like this one, the young man rescued would turn out to have a saintly disposition and would teach Malika how to be her own woman. Stolz turns this convention on its head, instead having the young man sneer at the ministrations of the women, angrily curse their ignorance (which he sees as willful), and teaches Malika to read possibly because he has nothing else to do. Likewise, the fact that Malika's father has two wives at first seems peaceful and without conflict. Later we learn that the situation was initially very tenuous and it was only with the birth of Malika herself that each woman came to terms with the other.

This world is entirely unlike most that children read about in books. Stolz has created something new and fascinating. It's a land where the cries of women throughout the day, from rooftop to rooftop, tell the news. Where an entire citizenry remains above the actions of the men below. And best of all, it's a truly interesting book. There are no easy answers in "The Shadows of Ghadames". And there isn't that Hollywood happy ending where everything turns out hunky-dory at the finale. There's just a tale of how the oppressed can still live fulfilling lives in spite of their prisons. A great book of 2004.