All Features

Fiction

The freaks are out tonight

Feature by BookPage contributors

The horror, the horror—oh, how we love the horror. Creepy children, bloodlust and white specters dominate the best novels for sending chills down your spine this Halloween.

More than a decade ago, Anne Rice walked away from the vampire mythology that helped make her a best-selling icon, and though she’s written plenty of other novels since, many fans have longed for a return. Prince Lestat, the 11th novel in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, is that comeback, but because it’s been so long since Rice has walked in this realm, she has made this more than just another installment.

Prince Lestat is an ambitious new story, yes, but it’s also an attempt to reacquaint all of us with the characters we’ve loved for years. Rice knows it’s been a while, and she crafts a tone that feels simultaneously like greeting an old friend and meeting a new one.

From the very first page, it’s clear Rice never lost touch with the exuberant, often witty and always fearless voice of irrepressible vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. When we meet Lestat this time, both he and the world of the vampires are in shambles. Nothing has been quite the same since the original vampire Akasha was struck down at the end of The Queen of the Damned, and the immortals long for a new leader. Many think Lestat should be that leader, but Lestat himself isn’t so sure.

The story jumps through time and around the globe as Lestat searches for redemption and tries to find his place in this chaotic world of blood drinkers. We meet new characters and revisit old favorites. We see exotic locales and contemplate the darkest part of Rice’s vampire lore. In the end, though the familiar parts of this saga are here, it’s clear that Rice isn’t content to rest on past bestsellers. This is, at its heart, a book about the new vampire order, about a new status quo. Rice has offered us a tale of tremendous ambition, and she’s absolutely delivered.

—Matthew Jackson

THE SPECTER OF DOUBT
Siobhan Adcock’s creepy debut, The Barter, is a good, old-fashioned ghost story that will make you jump when your walls creak. But it’s really about motherhood—the fierce love and the plaguing ambivalence. Looking closely at the uncertainties women wade through when their roles change, Adcock plumbs marital discord and the ways fear and self-doubt manifest in families.

Bridget, a successful Texas attorney, didn’t go back to work after maternity leave. Now, as she cares for her 10-month-old daughter, she still wonders if she made the right choice. Missing her workaholic husband, Bridget is also troubled by thoughts of her loved ones’ inevitable deaths. One night, Bridget sees a strange white form enter the nursery, lurching toward her and the baby. Now Bridget’s days and nights are filled with dread and the smell of dank earth as she tries to stay a step ahead of the ghost, alone.

Alternating chapters with Bridget’s story is that of Rebecca Mueller, a German Texan who in 1902 prepares to marry a man she’s not sure she loves. A wedding night filled with hostility and dashed hopes sets the tone for their marriage. Her one bright spot is her baby boy, but shadows threaten even this. Legend has it Rebecca’s mother bartered an hour of her life to save baby Rebecca’s. Could Rebecca do the same for her son if he were in danger?

Adcock’s insights into marital guilt and anger are precise, and her descriptions of parents’ love for their children—and vice versa—are spot-on. German folklore lends a touch of magical realism, weaving in dark fairy-tale themes of children in peril, bargaining and exchange. New moms should connect with Bridget’s and Rebecca’s doubts: Have they given too much of themselves to work, their husbands, their kids? Or not enough? Some of Adcock’s plot strands come a bit loose by the end, but her thoughtful story will keep readers reflecting on its themes once the shivers have passed.

—Sheri Bodoh

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters has all the ingredients of a classic horror novel: an isolated town, a young boy paralyzed by agoraphobia and a home that transforms itself from a dream into a nightmare.

Donohue transports readers to a Maine seaside town, home to the Keenan family. Tim Keenan is the primary caretaker of his emotionally fragile 10-year-old son, Jip. Tim’s wife, Holly, is convinced that her out-of-control son needs to be committed. Since a near-fatal accident three years prior, Jip has never been the same and now refuses to leave the house. Recently, Jip’s behavior has turned violent, and his latest obsession is drawing monsters. One evening, as Tim drives home Jip’s only friend, Nick, Tim nearly runs over a white figure that looks to be half man and half beast. Nick denies having seen anything, but only because he is too petrified: The monstrous figure is identical to one of Jip’s drawings. Soon, Holly begins to hear noises around the house and Tim finds icy wet footprints left in their hallway. But at the end of the day, only Jip knows the true explanation behind his parents’ hauntings, and only he can save or destroy his family.

With a mind-bending final twist, The Boy Who Drew Monsters—much in the tradition of the classic The Turn of the Screw—will leave readers shaking in their boots.

—Megan Fishmann

HIGH ON LIFE

In traditional vampire tales, superhuman creatures lust for the blood of ordinary mortals. Chase Novak’s Brood reverses this formula: In 21st-century New York, affluent thrill-seekers pay big bucks to drink the blood of teenage mutants. The kids providing this elixir are the product of an experimental fertility treatment that turned their parents into monstrous beings with an unspeakable hunger for raw flesh. As the offspring reach adolescence, they too start to change: They’re abnormally fast and strong, but also prone to murderous rages.

Brood (the sequel to 2012’s Breed) takes up the story of 12-year-old Adam and Alice. Two years after their parents’ violent deaths, the twins have been adopted by their aunt Cynthia. She hopes her love can help them forget the horrors of their past, but nothing is that simple. Terrified by the changes taking place within their bodies, the pair are starving themselves to stave off puberty. Meanwhile, a ragtag collective of feral teens is making a living selling blood, and they want the twins to join the pack.

As Adam and Alice fight for their lives, age-old terrors of adolescence merge with uniquely 21st-century fears in this gruesome and grimly funny tale.

—Emily Bartlett Hines

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The horror, the horror—oh, how we love the horror. Creepy children, bloodlust and white specters dominate the best novels for sending chills down your spine this Halloween.
Fiction

Three new books explore the power of belief

Feature by Arlene McKanic

Religion is a motivating force in the lives of millions of people, for good or for ill. In these three books, characters’ religious beliefs spur the action, influence major life decisions—or leave them with at least a shred of dignity under dire circumstances.

FBI-trained forensic artist Carrie Stuart Parks’ suspenseful novel, A Cry from the Dust, is inspired by a dark moment in history: the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, where a posse of renegade Mormons slaughtered a group of pioneers and tried to blame it on the Indians.

Gwen Marcey has no idea what she’s in for when she agrees to sculpt the death masks of three victims of the massacre. The forensic artist has taken the job at the Mountain Meadows Interpretive Center to pave the way for a return to a normal life after beating cancer. Mother of a stroppy teenager, ex-wife of a narcissistic best-selling author, owner of a pony-sized Great Pyrenees, Gwen is also intelligent, talented and amazingly perceptive. She will need all of her gifts to survive the mess she will soon find herself in: A remnant of a secret Mormon sect holds a grudge over the long-ago incident, and they want something from Gwen badly enough to kill.

Fortunately, our heroine is lucky even in her misfortune. As her Spock-like friend Beth says, “Everything happens for a reason.” Case in point: The ravages brought by Gwen’s cancer treatments—double mastectomy and hair loss—help her disguise herself during one of many close calls.

Besides having a resourceful and likable heroine, the book also features that rarest of characters: a villain you don’t see coming, but whom you hate with relish. Moreover, you think said villain’s crazy plans for world domination just might work. Let’s just say it’s amazing what some people think they can do with Semtex.

A Cry from the Dust will keep you hoping, praying and guessing till the end.

HOPE AND CHANGE
Philip Gulley’s latest novel, A Place Called Hope, begins propitiously. You’re about six pages in when you realize there are about a half dozen characters you want to smack. This might even include the lovable protagonist, Quaker minister Sam Gardner. That’s because everyone in his small town is pleased to walk all over him, from his wife to his secretary to the church elders.

Sam seems content to tolerate the abuse, until he isn’t. The last straw comes when, as a favor to another minister, Sam presides over a same-sex wedding at the Unitarian church. It gives his church elders the excuse to fire him that they’ve been looking for. It’s no wonder that he fantasizes, for a hot second, about writing a novel about a pastor who slaughters the elders of his church and stows their carcasses in a freezer.

But no matter—Sam finds another meeting to pastor, even though it does only have 12 members. Why, when it used to have more than 100, is one of the mysteries Sam needs to suss out. Gentle and humorous, A Place Called Hope strikes the reader as a sort of extended episode of “Leave it to Beaver” with email and smartphones. That, by the way, is a compliment.

HISTORY'S LESSONS
Though much has been written about World War II, the fight against Japan is often overshadowed by stories of Nazi brutality. This novel changes the balance. A little more than halfway through Sigmund Brouwer’s heartrending Thief of Glory, the sadistic director of a Japanese concentration camp in what was then Dutch East India demands that every girl over the age of 16 be turned over to him as a concubine. The women decide to refuse, knowing it may cost them their lives. Then, they break into “Amazing Grace.”

Though this is the most overtly religious scene in Brouwer’s book, faith pervades the narrative of this Empire of the Sun-like tale of Jeremiah Prins’ childhood in a Jappenkamp. We see it in the piety of the Prins family before they are torn asunder by the occupation. We see it in Jeremiah’s repudiation of his faith after he’s lost everything, and his struggle to get it back.

The author of more than 30 novels, Brouwer based this novel partly on his father’s own experiences in Indonesia during WWII. Not just a book about faith, Thief of Glory is also about redemption and forgiveness.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Religion is a motivating force in the lives of millions of people, for good or for ill. In these three books, characters’ religious beliefs spur the action, influence major life decisions—or leave them with at least a shred of dignity under dire circumstances.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Fiendish fun for Halloween

Feature by Julie Hale

It’s trick-or-treat time again, but we’ve got something better than candy—a roundup of the season’s creepiest new books! Readers, beware: Nothing says “boo” like the spooky titles below.

TOO MANY TREATS
A madcap Halloween adventure featuring two supernatural siblings, The Sweetest Witch Around by Alison McGhee and Harry Bliss is the irresistible follow-up to the duo’s best-selling book, A Very Brave Witch. It’s Halloween, and young Witchling listens dutifully as big sis urges her not to be afraid of humans in spite of their odd ways, like the strange tradition of trick-or-treating. “Candy is gross,” says big sis. Witchling samples some, thinks otherwise, and hops on her broom in hopes of scoring more. She falls in with a group of costumed kids and collects a brimming hatful. Big sis tracks her movements and soon retrieves her, but the trip home by broom proves precarious. Witchling’s haul of treats is too heavy! Forced to abandon the candy or crash, they toss it overboard. Back home, big sis sees her sibling in a new light, admiring her pluck and sense of daring. Bliss’ trademark ink-and-watercolor illustrations are filled with not-to-be overlooked details, like Witchling’s EZ-Bake Cauldron and Graveyard Barbie. This is a sweet treat from start to finish.

A TERRIFYING TRANSFORMATION
Edgar Dreadbury, the protagonist of Keith Graves’ ingenious book, The Monsterator, is a bit of a creep. A pampered lad who’s lord of the Dreadbury manse—an unwelcoming gray pile that has all the makings of a haunted house—he has a seen-it-all attitude toward Halloween and its requisite dress-up ritual. “I wish I could be something screamingly scary,” he says. On a quest for fresh ways to be frightening, he happens upon a store with a strange machine and, following the instructions on its exterior, inserts a coin. Inside the contraption, Edgar morphs from boy to monster, a transformation that’s complete—he sports horns, fangs and a tail—and, as Edgar soon learns, permanent. Appropriately enough, every day is now Halloween for the Dreadbury boy, who’s pleased indeed with his monster makeover and takes singular delight in terrorizing trick-or-treaters. Graves’ brilliant acrylic-paint illustrations have a classic yet creepy quality, and there’s a scary surprise at the end for readers, who can make their own monsters with pages that flip. Frightening fun!

PUMPKIN POWER
A clever coming-of-age story and sweet celebration of the season, Little Boo, by Stephen Wunderli, is the tale of a not very scary, really rather adorable pumpkin seed who can’t wait to grow up. Little Boo was born ready to unleash his inner Jack-o’-lantern. As a young seed anxious to reach his full, frightening potential, he tries—and inevitably fails—to spook his garden companions. “Boo!” he says, addressing a bug, who doesn’t blink an eye. “Boo!” he exclaims to a snowflake, who smiles in response. And so it goes, though the four seasons, until sufficient time has passed, and Boo at last achieves pumpkin status. As a full-fledged Jack-o’-lantern placed in a prime spot on the porch, he proudly sends his ghoulish glow out into the world. Tim Zeltner’s swirling acrylic and glaze illustrations, executed on plywood, capture the spirit of the most mischievous night of the year. Boo is the perfect companion for little tricksters, but Halloween lovers of all ages will fall for this festive story.

It’s trick-or-treat time again, but we’ve got something better than candy—a roundup of the season’s creepiest new books! Readers, beware: Nothing says “boo” like the spooky titles below.

Romance

Have faith in love

Feature by Lois Dyer

The world of inspirational romance is filled with books that run the gamut of human emotion. We’ve chosen four inspirational titles that you’re sure to enjoy, so brew a pot of Earl Grey, find a comfy spot, curl up and settle in with one or all of these wonderful reads.

GILDED AGE OF ROMANCE
Bestselling author Julie Lessman’s Surprised By Love, the third book in The Heart Of San Francisco series, is set during the Gilded Age in San Francisco’s notorious Barbary Coast. The beloved daughter of a wealthy family, Megan McClare returns home after a long visit in Paris. The once shy, chubby, freckle-faced child has grown into a beautiful woman during her year in France. The change in her appearance is startling, and her childhood champion, Bram Hughes, is bowled over at first sight. He’s always adored Megan’s warmth and kindness; now, her stunning beauty makes him see her as a desirable woman as well. Megan is in love with Bram, but he holds her at arms-length, for his father is pressing Bram to marry another in order to seal a business deal and save the family business. Bram feels he cannot let his father down. Meanwhile, Megan tries to hide her disappointment and throws herself into her internship at the district attorney’s office. Heartbreak surely looms for this young couple if they cannot find solutions to the myriad of obstacles that keep them apart.

Lessman makes the Gilded Age come alive with Stanley Steamer cars, beaded bodices and Gibson Girl hairstyles. In this well-plotted story, Megan and Bram are admirable, strong characters that will have readers rooting for their happy ending.

BIG TEXAS LOVE
The American West at the turn of the century is the setting for A Matter Of Heart by Tracie Peterson. Beautiful Jessica Atherton is the only daughter of a wealthy rancher in 1896 Texas. When the man she’d expected to marry weds another, Jessica finds herself questioning her assumptions about her world. What does she want from life? What character traits does she possess that she’s proud of? Does she want to marry? As she’s struggling with her view of herself, two men enter her life. One is a handsome lawyer who can give her the kind of privileged life she’s always known. The other, Austin Todd, is a Texas Ranger with a dark past and secrets in his eyes. Jessica finds herself drawn to Austin, as he is to her. While she ponders her future and her Christian faith, danger intrudes, and Austin must fulfill his duty. With his life at risk, their future is by no means assured.

Peterson paints a vivid picture of rural late-1800s Texas in this charming novel. The hero’s detective work adds an appealing bit of mystery and danger to the romance. Readers are certain to cheer for Jessica as she matures into a kinder, stronger, more compassionate woman.

THERE'S GOT TO BE SOMETHING MORE
Life among England’s privileged upper crust is explored in The Daughter of Highland Hall, the second in Carrie Turansky’s Edwardian Brides series. Sponsored by her difficult aristocratic aunt, lovely debutante Katherine Ramsey is in the midst of her first London season when a family scandal erupts. Fortunately for Katherine, she has a staunch supporter in medical student Jonathan Foster, her guardian’s brother-in-law. Jonathan is a man of strong Christian character and he loves Katherine, but he believes he would never be accepted as a suitor due to his lower social standing. Katherine, however, values Jonathan for his kindness, strength, commitment to medicine and his dedication to helping the poor. As they spend time together, she finds Jonathan’s wise counsel helps her work through her concerns about how God fits in her life.

This is a touching story of two honorable young people poised on the edge of their adult lives, giving thoughtful consideration to how they will spend the ensuing years. The details of upper class life in Edwardian London add color and texture to the story while secondary characters give the tale warmth and charm.

AMISH ATTRACTIONS
Christy Award winner Leslie Gould returns to Amish country in Becoming Bea, the fourth entry in her popular series, The Courtships of Lancaster County. Beatrice Zook is a homebody with no urge to travel; despite her sister’s protests, Bea stays behind when her family leaves Lancaster County on a trip to Montana. Bea has been hired to assist a local family overwhelmed with the birth of their triplets. Much to her surprise, she finds she has a talent for child-care, and being on her own allows her freedom to mature and become more independent. However, she still struggles with her difficult relationship with longtime friend and one-time beau, Ben Rupp. He knows all the buttons to push to spark her temper, but is the heat between them caused by annoyance or attraction?

Gould has created a warm community filled with interesting characters, while the details of daily life in the close knit Amish world near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, are intriguing. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this charming novel.

 Lois Dyer writes from her home in Washington State.

 

The world of inspirational romance is filled with books that run the gamut of human emotion. We’ve chosen four inspirational titles that you’re sure to enjoy, so brew a pot of Earl Grey, find a comfy spot, curl up and settle in with one or all of these wonderful reads
NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

That’s what makes the jukebox spin

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs. 

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN’
Over a two-year period, maverick Southern author Rick Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’) sat down with Jerry Lee Lewis and let the Killer walk “day after day through the past and come back, sometimes bloody, with the stories in this book.” Not simply an “as-told-to” memoir, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is a harmonious blend, with Lewis providing the details of his life and Bragg weaving a narrative around them to add historical and cultural context. “He did not want to do a first-person book,” Bragg writes, “and I had no interest in trying to pretend to be him. Instead, this is one man talking of a remarkable life and another man writing it down and shaping it into a life story so rich that, if I had not been there, I would have wondered if it was real.”

And Lewis’ story is definitely remarkable: Full of life from birth—“I come out jumpin’, an’ I been jumpin’ ever since”—Lewis discovered his “reason for being born” when he saw a piano in his aunt’s house as a child. He knew he wanted to be a star, so he pursued his dream relentlessly, appearing in clubs when he was 14 and lying about his age. Lewis burned down many roadhouses with his raucous style, rising to fame with songs such as “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and leaving in his wake broken marriages and mangled friendships. The book candidly catalogs his problems with drugs, alcohol, taxes and women (his seven marriages included a union with his 13-year-old second cousin that caused an international scandal). Lewis also acknowledges his fear that he may have led people astray with his music, but confesses that music was the purest part of his life. Lewis tells his story here for the first time, and it’s every bit as frantic, ugly, joyful and searing as you’d expect from the Killer.

A NATURAL WOMAN
While Lewis hypnotized audiences with manic energy, Aretha Franklin grew up in the Detroit church where her father preached, playing soulful gospel piano and developing her unmistakable voice. Franklin collaborated with music writer David Ritz in 1999 on a less-than-revealing memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. As Ritz explains in his new book, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Franklin asked him to work with her on a second volume, but he declined, citing her insistence on steering clear of certain topics. Instead, Ritz chose to write an independent biography, drawing on his earlier conversations with the singer, her friends and family to provide a full and frank account of the Queen of Soul’s career. Moving album by album, the book recounts her rise to the top of the soul charts in the late 1960s and her fall from the throne in the early 1970s. She struggled to find her style in the disco era, and reinvented herself in 1985 with the hit “Freeway of Love.” Franklin isolated herself for almost 20 years after the deaths of her father, sisters and brother, only to come out of the shadows once again in 2008 to sing at President Obama’s first inauguration. Franklin’s life is rarely pretty, however, and Respect is ultimately a poignant and disappointing tale of a singer who never reached the pinnacle for which she aimed.

SOUL SACRIFICE
In 1966, a young guitar player named Carlos Santana filled in one night at Bill Graham’s famous Fillmore West with an impromptu group of musicians; the rest, as they say, is history. Three years later, Santana and his band mesmerized the crowd at Woodstock, and soon after, the band’s first album climbed to #4 on the Billboard charts. Reaching this level of success wasn’t easy, as Santana reveals in his new memoir, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, which he co-wrote with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller. Although the book’s prose is sometimes flat and repetitive, the details of Santana’s story are nevertheless compelling. He traces his path from his childhood in the Mexican town of Autlán to his earliest gigs at El Convoy in Tijuana. Santana recounts his sometimes ragged family life and reveals for the first time the sexual abuse he suffered at age 11 at the hands of a man who took him to San Diego and molested him, leaving the boy with “an intense feeling of pleasure mixed with confusion, shame, and guilt for letting it happen.” Above all, however, Santana’s memoir recounts his spiritual quest to find the “story behind the stories, the music behind the music. . . . I call it the Universal Tone, and with it you realize you are not alone; you are connected to everyone.”

 

Paul McCartney added psychedelic illustrations to his handwritten lyrics for “The Word,” a song on 1965’s Rubber Soul album. 
From The Beatles Lyrics, reprinted with permission. Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

 

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
Although the life stories of musicians continue to fascinate us, we’re just as intrigued and perplexed by the lyrics of popular songs. Few songs have been as scrutinized as those by the Beatles, and in his new book, The Beatles Lyrics, Beatles biographer Hunter Davies not only probes the meanings of the Fab Four’s songs but also gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at their writing process. For John Lennon and Paul McCartney, songwriting could happen anywhere—songs might begin as a scribble on the back of an envelope or on hotel stationery. “Strawberry Fields,” for example, was written by Lennon when he was in Spain, far from home and thinking back on his childhood in Liverpool. This stunning collection explores the stories behind all the Beatles’ classics and includes more than 100 original handwritten manuscripts.

CRYING, WAITING, HOPING
The hallways of rock ’n’ roll history are littered with volumes that move mechanically through a year-by-year chronicle of important events. Noted cultural critic Greil Marcus wasn’t interested in writing a typical history of the genre, however. His provocative The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs chronicles the music through an exploration of 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008. In his typical gnostic style, Marcus examines the ways in which each song transcends its era, gathering meaning as it is recorded by artists in completely new times and places. For example, he observes that the Teddy Bears’ 1958 hit, “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” took 48 years to find its voice. “When Amy Winehouse sang it in 2006, her music curled around Phil Spector’s [who wrote the song], his curled around her, until she found her way back to the beginning of his career, and redeemed it.”

Marcus’ unconventional history captures the unruly, unpredictable nature of rock ’n’ roll.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs.
Food & DrinkCookbooks

Move over, Mrs. Beeton—Mr. Boston is back in town

Feature by Eve Zibart

After decades of transforming everyday life into a service industry, Americans are embracing DIY as a second language, with whole industries devoted to restoring the lost garden of earthly delights.

BRING HAPPY HOUR HOME
Organic produce and farm-to-table dining, artisan cheeses, small-vineyard wines, etc., are badges of the newly educated palate. There are more has-beens wielding knives and renovating houses on cable TV than on “Dancing with the Stars.”

And now we are in the age of the mixologist. You read it here first: The next Cooking Channel will be the Cocktail Channel. While drinkers’ manuals to consuming wine, whiskey, beer and so on have been flourishing for years, the trend now calls for how-to books designed to reinvent happy hour as home entertainment.

Among the most useful, and admirably unpretentious, is The 12 Bottle Bar: A Dozen Bottles. Hundreds of Cocktails. A New Way to Drink. by David Solmonson and Lesley Jacobs Solmonson, which leads you gently from buying the basics to making the best of them—a friendly offer made even less threatening when you realize that the dependable dozen includes two vermouths, two bitters and orange liqueur (i.e., Cointreau, Grand Marnier, etc.). Even more admirable, it reminds readers that being a good host has more to do with joining your guests than trying to impress them.

At once the wittiest and most comprehensive of new spirits encyclopedias, The Thinking Drinker’s Guide to Alcohol: A Cocktail of Amusing Anecdotes and Opinion on the Art of Imbibing, by Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham, arose from a theatrical lecture at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011, but it’s more than wordplay. It’s a succinct but surprisingly sound romp through the history of spirits, their great proponents (Jack Kerouac for tequila, Thomas Jefferson for wine, Hemingway for rum), a bit of myth and culture (the Wild West) and even some great movie moments as well as a restrained selection of famous labels. Oh, and did you know? Jesus was a beer guy. (Toga party, anyone?) It may also be the first such tome with a Kickstarter pedigree, making it a truly populist publication. The collage-style illustrations and graphic timelines are equally admirable.

AN AMERICAN CLASSIC
Although it might sound painfully stodgy, Michael Dietsch’s Shrubs: An Old-Fashioned Drink for Modern Times is a fine introduction to artisanal ingredients you actually can make at home. A shrub is simply a beverage combining fruit and herbs or spices with vinegar, or in some cases citrus fruit. It’s a style of drink that goes back millennia, and was a staple of Founding Mother pantries; one of the recipes comes from Martha Washington, another from Ben Franklin. Such beverages are still common elsewhere—I have a bottle and recipe book from the wife of a highly regarded Japanese winemaker—and are immensely soothing by themselves as well as in mixed drinks, which makes them perfect for mixed-ages parties (or, as per Dietsch’s wife, for the pregnant or indisposed). Most of the 40 or so shrub recipes here have only three or four ingredients and don’t even require cooking; what a lovely weekend project!

FOR COCKTAIL NERDS ONLY
At the far end of the accessibility spectrum is molecular mixology, and only true cocktail geeks (or those looking for gifts for them) will get the full frontal benefit of Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail Momofuku’s resident mad scientist Dave Arnold, who is to cocktails as Richard Blais is to home cooking (doesn’t everyone use liquid nitrogen in the kitchen?), discourses at length on the correct size of ice cubes for specific concoctions, quick-cooking bitters, countertop distilling, eutectic freezing (look it up), comparative percentages of ethanol in mixers and so on. Fortunately, there are a few recipes that don’t require a vacuum machine, so maybe you and your Significant Nerd can bond over those.

SPIRIT GUIDES
Matt Teacher’s The Spirit of Gin: A Stirring Miscellany of the New Gin Revival begins with a foreword by Arrigo Cipriani, son of the co-founder of the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice, and includes interviews with distinguished bartenders and producers, but sometimes there’s a little too much Teacher in the talk. It is, however, a lush and beautiful book full of what might be called cocktail porn—full-color photographs of concoctions, shakers, bars, etc. (Nearly 40 percent of the book is entitled “A Catalogue of Gin Distillers,” and what with the pictures of various producers’ bottles, it starts to feel a little like a sales brochure.)

Whisk(e)y Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life, by Heather Greene, is modeled on the now-familiar wine manual style, combining history, terroir (bourbon vs. Irish, and that pesky “e”), science and technology (distilling methods, barrel aging), education (deciphering labels) and storage and entertaining tips (recipes and glassware). Greene, who teaches a whiskey course at Manhattan’s Flatiron Room and was the first woman to serve on the Scotch Malt Whisky Society tasting panel, plays up the chick-liquor schtick a little too much, but she’s particularly good on tasting elements and flavor and aroma descriptions. As she points out, women seem to have better noses.

Now, if someone would just outlaw the subtitle, we could save a forest.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After decades of transforming everyday life into a service industry, Americans are embracing DIY as a second language, with whole industries devoted to restoring the lost garden of earthly delights.
FashionBiography

The frivolous and the familiar

Feature by Cat Acree

Though it evolves constantly, fashion would grow stagnant without personal flourishes like a favorite pair of lived-in jeans. “The best things in life are free,” Chanel famously said. “The second best are very expensive.”

TASTEMAKERS
Fashion can be considered trivial or superficial, and in many ways this is true. But at its best, fashion can incite, even disturb, the imagination. Between the pages of W magazine, with its commitment to pushing boundaries and fostering the art of long-form photography, it thrives. Editor-in-Chief Stefano Tonchi collects 10 of the magazine’s finest productions from the past two decades in W: Stories, allowing an unexpected peek behind these remarkable, avant-garde editorials with outtakes, inspiration boards and brief essays from photographers, designers and more. Steven Meisel’s first shoot with W raised questions of beauty and gender with aggressive, androgynous models sprawling up and down half-lit urban alleys. Actress Tilda Swinton recalls her and photographer Tim Walker’s pilgrimage to Iceland, where they shot alien, forbidding images that at times look like stills from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Photographer Alex Prager describes assembling a lovely and gloomy cast of characters to portray a Hitchcockian day at the races. This is fashion at its most provocative, a necessary book for minds that require a little disturbance.

Tilda Swinton in W magazine, August 2011. From W: Stories, reprinted with permission.

CLOTHES HORSE
From fantasy we move to reality, and no book better captures the relationship between real women and their clothing than Women in Clothes. The truly stylish—or even those who have given the slightest thought to their style—aren’t taking their every cue from glossy magazine spreads, so editors Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton set out to discover just what women think about when they put themselves together. The result is a truly all-encompassing (but never overwhelming), contemporary “philosophy of style,” a collection of interviews and surveys of more than 600 artists, writers and other women. It’s like a massive conference call with all your friends and everyone else’s friends, too. As Heti writes, “The most compelling women are the ones who are distinctive, who are most like themselves and least like other women.” It’s nice to feel that your idiosyncracies and influences can be considered as important as good tailoring, and you may find yourself polling your friends, looking at other women differently or at least feeling a little better about owning 10 gray sweatshirts.

Or perhaps you have 12 pairs of red shoes or too many wrap dresses—no judgment either way. That being said, you’re likely to have one pair of red flats you love more than any other. Based on Emily Spivack’s blog of the same name, Worn Stories eschews the beautiful side of fashion for the pricelessness and singularity of that one favorite thing. More than 60 cultural figures and celebs, many of whom reside in New York, reveal their personal connections to just one item of clothing, from fashion designer and self-declared “total dork” Cynthia Rowley’s Girl Scout sash to John Hodgman’s Ayn Rand dress. One piece of clothing can tell quite a story, and this book is delightful proof of that.

PEARLS AND FLATS
Time and time again we return to Coco Chanel (1883-1971), the patron saint of classic, feminine style and a cultural force unlike any before or since. Though we recreate her image with our cardigans and taupe flats, biographers who have attempted to capture Chanel are more often than not thwarted by their own subject. Chanel notoriously tried to block anyone from writing her story and repeatedly obfuscated fact with fiction. According to Rhonda K. Garelick, author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History, the gaps in Chanel’s story are as essential to her persona as her stylistic revolution. So rather than “pinning down a ghost,” this new bio explores Chanel’s story (as we know it) in relationship to the vast theater of European history. Garelick—who was granted unrestricted access to the Chanel Archives in Paris and to the diaries of Chanel’s lover, Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov—has produced an epic, well-researched balance of historical resonance and breathless admiration.

TIMELESS ARCHIVES
Fashion on its grandest scale lies within the pages of Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. The Met’s Costume Institute (reopened this year as the Anna Wintour Costume Center) houses more than 35,000 costumes and accessories from the 15th century on, and has been funded since 1948 by the yearly Costume Institute Benefit, an evening of pretty people dressed in pretty things. This book looks back on the exhibitions and galas of the 21st century, beginning with 2001’s “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years” and ending with the architectural feats of high-glamour ball gowns in 2014’s “Charles James: Beyond Fashion.” Featuring Vogue editorials and essays by Hamish Bowles, this is where art, fashion and history collide, where creativity meets—and manipulates—our culture. It might be frivolous, but it’s far from trivial.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Though it evolves constantly, fashion would grow stagnant without personal flourishes like a favorite pair of lived-in jeans. “The best things in life are free,” Chanel famously said. “The second best are very expensive.”
Children's & YAPicture Book

First sign of flurries

Feature by Julie Hale

Snow holds a special sway over the imagination. Daredevil sledding sessions, snowball brawls, warm cups of cocoa—snow days are coming soon, so now's the time to get ready!

NONSTOP SNOW
Caldecott Honor winner John Rocco shares an epic incident from his childhood in Blizzard, an account of the 1978 storm that dropped 40 inches of snow on the Northeast. While the young narrator is initially thrilled by the weather (no school!), he finds that snow, in excess, does not necessarily equal fun. The white stuff won’t support the weight of sledders, and walking through it is like wading. With stressed parents, a rapidly diminishing stock of food and no sign of snowplows, the narrator, inspired by the Artic explorers of old, sets off on an expedition to collect supplies—a major mission that proves a success. From this boyhood victory, Rocco has created an unforgettable book. Through his intriguing pencil, watercolor and digitally painted illustrations, he cleverly communicates the scale of the blizzard (a stop sign disappears into a drift), and his characters’ warm, beaming faces reflect the celebratory spirit that snow always seems to inspire.

WINTRY WORDPLAY
In Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold, Joyce Sidman and Rick Allen take a fascinating look at how animals endure the shivery, dark weeks of winter. Through rollicking rhymes and breezy free verse, Sidman examines the cold-weather habits of wolves, moose, snakes, beavers, tundra swans and more. Her lines are full of fresh imagery (bees have “eyelash legs” and “tinsel wings”), and the collection as a whole unlocks the secrets of nature in ways young readers will appreciate. (Who knew that snakes hibernate in the same place every winter?) Sidebars offer intriguing survival stories and fun facts about each creature, while Allen’s digitally layered linoleum-block prints provide detailed studies of the season. A collection that’s as crisp as the first snowfall, Winter Bees is the perfect way to pass a chilly afternoon.

SNOWY ADVENTURE
In her magical new book, Outside, Deirdre Gill celebrates the mind-expanding nature of snow and the ways it can lend new dimension to the everyday world. A restless boy watches through a window as white flakes pile up outside. After exhausting all of his indoor options (like pestering his brother), he leaves the house and heads into the woods, where the majestic, snow-coated trees provide a change of perspective. Left to his own devices, he rolls up a frosty white ball that transforms into—among other thrilling things—a giant snowman. When a winged dragon enters the mix, the boy enjoys a ride through the sky. Gill’s expert oil-on-paper illustrations create a telling contrast between the house’s stuffy interior and the open-ended nature of the great outdoors. Her lovely book captures the quiet mystery of the season.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Snow holds a special sway over the imagination. Daredevil sledding sessions, snowball brawls, warm cups of cocoa—snow days are coming soon, so now's the time to get ready!
NonfictionBiography

Jackie as first lady, wife and mother

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

The Kennedys continue their reign as the royal family of publishing. One year after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy set off an avalanche of new titles examining his death and presidency, it is the former first lady who is under the microscope in a pair of new biographies with differing agendas.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story has a traditional birth-to-death arc, but midway through, the focus is on Jackie’s behavior after the assassination of her husband. Author Barbara Leaming makes a strong argument, based on original research, that Jackie suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at a time before the condition had been diagnosed.

“I am a living wound,” said Jackie, who self-medicated with vodka and cigarettes. Guilt-ridden that she hadn’t been able to yank her husband out of the way of the fatal gunshot, Jack’s widow talked incessantly to friends—whether or not they wanted to hear—about that dark day in Dallas. To a priest she knew well, she revealed she was contemplating suicide.

While she had no interest in the investigation into JFK’s murder, she was contentiously obsessed with his legacy. After concocting the notion—for an enthusiastically complicit Life magazine—of Camelot as the theme of the JFK presidency, she battled writers whose views differed from hers. Her dispute with historian William Manchester, whom she commissioned to write The Death of a President, was so bitter and protracted that, in time, public sentiment turned against her.

The 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, just three months apart, had Jackie believing that she and/or her children would be next. It was in part to escape what she called “the outside world” that she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. The public was appalled—as was the media. (“Jack Kennedy Dies Today for a Second Time” proclaimed one headline.)

According to Leaming, whose previous subjects include Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, the Ari-Jackie marriage was stronger (for awhile) than most people realize. He “rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed in shadows,” she once said. Onassis was also a good stepfather to Caroline and John.

The marriage to JFK had come about, at least on his part, largely for political reasons; the young senator required a wife to counter his playboy image. Jacqueline Bouvier, the product of a respected finishing school and a former debutante—who once said her life’s ambition was “not to be a housewife”—wasn’t nearly as pretty as the girls JFK typically  squired, but shared his passion for reading and the arts. To Jackie, he was reminiscent of her bad boy-father (John “Black Jack” Bouvier), whose infidelities led to her parents’ divorce.

JFK had not exactly been the ideal husband—his infidelities were legend. But as his wife, and eventual First Lady, Jackie sculpted a legend of her own. To this day she remains the supreme White House style icon. (Sorry, Michelle.) Her credentials as a tastemaker contributed to her reinvention, in her latter years, as a book editor and outspoken advocate for historic preservation. As for her greatest achievement, she once opined, “I think it is that, after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.”

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., in John’s nursery, following a joint birthday party for the children at the White House in 1962.

A SON’S TRAGIC LEGACY
The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved mines some of the same sources utilized in the Leaming book, but the emphasis is on Jackie’s close relationship with John Jr., and the tone is more tabloid-ish than refined.

Christopher Andersen, who has written a slew of celeb titles including a number of Kennedy tomes (among them, Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot and Jack and Jackie: Portrait of an American Marriage), bookends the mother-son saga with the tragic death of John Jr. 15 years ago.

Reflecting on his celebrated childhood, the adult John couldn’t distinguish between personal reminiscences and public images captured by the cameras. (Of his famed salute at his father’s funeral, he admitted, “I’d like to say I remember that moment. But I don’t.”) Andersen tells us about Jackie’s efforts, in the aftermath of JFK’s death, to provide her son with a strong masculine role model. Robert F. Kennedy fit the bill. Indeed, Peter Lawford told his wife that RFK filled in for JFK “in all departments”—including as a lover to Jackie.

Aristotle Onassis would be an especially vivid and helpful father figure, a status Andersen depicts while simultaneously throwing in allegations that Onassis was a cross-dresser (using the name “Arianna”) who enjoyed himself with young Greek males. As is now widely known, he also continued seeing his former mistress, the opera great Maria Callas (whose nickname for Jackie was “the False Lady”).

Yeah, it’s got lots of dish, including plenty about the hunky John’s never-boring love life. There are myriad celebrity girlfriends, including Sharon Stone and Madonna (“a sexual dynamo,” according to John). He and Daryl Hannah were on-again/off-again for years; at one point they even got a marriage license—and she bought a wedding gown at a flea market.

Jackie, who was none too pleased with John-John’s Madonna hookup, and who took to shunning actress Hannah, passed away of non-Hodgkins lymphoma before getting to meet Carolyn Bessette. Tall, slim and elegant, the young woman who became John’s wife had many qualities similar to Jackie—and in contrast to John. She was orderly and tidy; he was haphazard and sloppy. She was coolly detached; he was warm and ingratiating. Their marriage would have probably ended in divorce, per their various friends’ accounts (toward the end they were constantly fighting), had they not died, along with Carolyn’s sister, in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999.

Andersen sees John’s legacy as one of unfulfilled promise. As delivered here, cleverly intertwined with Jackie’s story, it’s also one for the books.

 
Photo credit: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
The Kennedys continue their reign as the royal family of publishing. One year after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy set off an avalanche of new titles examining his death and presidency, it is the former first lady who is under the microscope in a pair of new biographies with differing agendas.
PhotographyArt

Expand your visual frontiers

Feature by Alice Cary

Whether you prefer classic design, historic photography, performance art or up-and-coming modern artists, you’ll find something in these five books to whet your appetite.

THE ART OF THE BOOK
Books represent one of my favorite forms of artistic expression, and The Thing The Book: A Monument to the Book as Object takes a truly novel approach to the subject. Creators Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan (publishers of THE THING Quarterly) decided to make a book into what they call an “exhibition space.” They invited a variety of artists and illustrators to celebrate the physical nature of books, and the result is certainly an unusual conglomeration of creativity. Sam Green, for example, writes a colophon describing, in pictures and words, the phone book entries of a San Francisco man named Zachary Zzzzzzzzzra from 1963 through 1986. Mark Dion presents a wonderful photo essay called “Cover Life,” which simply depicts the covers of more than 50 well-worn books, ranging from the classic children’s book A Hole Is to Dig to a tattered Ulysses paperback. His montage is a thoughtful way to examine how books influence a life. With varied entries like this, the result is pure fun and oddly compelling. Everything is worth examining (there’s even a naughty errata slip), including the bookplate, bookmark ribbon and index.

IN FOCUS
More typical in layout and structure is the massive Photography: The Definitive Visual History. Photography expert Tom Ang has compiled this comprehensive look at the subject, beginning with inventions such as the camera obscura and continuing through today’s digital age.

This well-organized volume contains sections that examine historical trends, such as “Diversity and Conflict” from 1960 to 1979. There’s also an A-to-Z list of photographers, along with short profiles. You’ll see much that is familiar, but you’re also bound to discover new treats, such as Dutch photographer Frans Lanting’s “Dead Camelthorn Trees.” This striking image, taken in a national park in Namibia, is otherworldly, reminiscent of an exceptional illustration from a children’s book. Each historical discussion examines a variety of topics, such as the Polaroid camera, photography in space and the advent of the iPhone 3GS. Certain photographers are profiled in detail, such as Walker Evans and Cindy Sherman. Noteworthy photos are explored as well, including Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother.”

Even if you’re not a camera buff, this book is nothing short of fascinating.

DISAPPEARING ACT
Chinese artist Liu Bolin is known as “The Invisible Man,” and Liu Bolin presents a captivating retrospective of his politically charged work, complete with 200 color photographs. Bolin’s well-known Hiding in the City series began in 2005, after the Chinese police destroyed the artists’ village where he had been working. His signature style then emerged when he painted his entire body to blend into the background of the demolished village. Bolin went on to photograph himself in painted camouflage all over Beijing, and later in places like New York and Venice.

In the book’s introduction, Sorbonne art professor Philippe Dagen writes that Bolin “composes images that at first attract, then surprise and disturb, and finally imprint themselves on the memory. He uses a unique artistic form with a rare effectiveness that is perfectly in sync with the modern times.” Bolin’s images are indeed mesmerizing, managing to be compelling to everyone from a preschooler to the most sophisticated art critic. Watch him appear and disappear in front of a tropical fruit stand, a locomotive, racks of magazines, a toy shop or in the midst of a Venice street scene. This volume is a worthy tribute to this artist’s singular accomplishments.

DESIGN LEGENDS
Eames: Beautiful Details is just the visually arresting package one would expect from two of the greatest designers of the 20th century. Encased in a bold, colorful slipcase, this hefty compendium is a very personal look at the work of husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames, renowned for their work in architecture, furniture, textile, film, photography and graphic design. After marrying in 1941, the couple was commissioned by the U.S. Navy during World War II to produce molded plywood splints, stretchers and more. One art critic called their molded plywood chair “the chair of the century.” Another creation, the Eames lounge chair, is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The fact that this couple was creative on so many different fronts means that this book is a particularly rich edition, full of family photos and personal memories, as well as reminisces describing the designers’ process and design philosophies. Charles summed up his and Ray’s life perfectly by saying, “At all times love and discipline have led to a beautiful environment and a good life.”

MODERN ART SAMPLER
What’s happening in modern art? The 21st-Century Art Book will bring you up to speed. This alphabetical overview takes a look at contemporary art since 2000, including paintings, photography, sculpture, performance art, video and digital art and more. The pleasing layout makes for easy browsing, with each page containing a photograph and a short write-up about an artist. Some entries will likely be familiar, such as the 110-ton Chicago “Bean” sculpture, more properly known as Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate.” Many entries document the ever-expanding criteria of what defines modern art, such as a video and sound installation by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat that depicts a funeral procession on a beach. British artist Michael Landy catalogued everything he owned (7,277 items) and then placed them on a conveyor belt to be destroyed by a machine. Regardless of your opinions about such works, all are thought provoking and likely to lead art lovers to new discoveries.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Whether you prefer classic design, historic photography, performance art or up-and-coming modern artists, you’ll find something in these five books to whet your appetite.
Nonfiction

A season of magic and redemption

Feature by Heather Seggel

The Christmas season is full of touchstones: Santa with the Rockettes at Radio City, small kindnesses from strangers and boisterous shouts of, “God bless us, every one!” These new books pair nicely with a crackling fire on a frosty night. 

THE MAGIC OF HUMAN KINDNESS
Author Joanne Huist Smith was struggling. As a newly widowed single mother, she wanted to forget Christmas altogether, a resistance that was making the season harder on her kids. When a poinsettia turned up on their porch with a personalized verse from “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” she wanted to chuck it, but the children were intrigued. Then more gifts showed up, and the family had a mystery on their hands. The 13th Gift: A True Story of a Christmas Miracle shows how an anonymous kindness can bring a family back together, first when they attempt to catch the givers in the act, and later when they welcome the holiday spirit back into their altered landscape. The gifts they receive are small but make a lasting impact, and this warmhearted story is sure to inspire others to help those in need.

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST
It doesn’t matter where you live; for many of us, Christmas belongs to Charles Dickens’ London. Inventing Scrooge: The Incredible True Story Behind Dickens’ Legendary ‘A Christmas Carol’ explores the author’s life and times and finds the real inspirations behind the characters and places in Dickens’ novella. The book is a gold mine for Dickens fans, worth it for the thumbnail biography of Ebenezer Scroggie (Scrooge’s namesake) alone. Author Carlo DeVito also notes Dickens’ gift for reading his work aloud on stage, a practice that earned him more money than the sales of his books. Inventing Scrooge is a beautiful history of a holiday classic and a brilliant peek behind the curtains at the creative process.

HOME BY CHRISTMAS
A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During the Korean War is not typical holiday fare. Stanley Weintraub’s gritty look at the early months of the war, and General MacArthur’s declaration that it would be over by Christmas despite deadly advances by Chinese forces, is a tragedy suffused with stories of triumph. Caught in battle but losing more men to frostbite than combat, American soldiers repaired broken equipment with pocket-melted Tootsie Rolls and tried to eat holiday meals that froze solid when uncovered. The battle scenes are gripping, the losses grave, but the last troop ships weighed anchor on Christmas Eve, making good on MacArthur’s boast. Give this book to the history buffs in your life, along with some Tootsie Rolls, and they’ll be occupied until New Year’s.

WALKING IN SANTA’S BOOTS
For 27 years, Charles Edward Hall embodied the Christmas spirit by ho-ho-hoing as Santa Claus in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. In Santa Claus Is for Real: A True Christmas Fable About the Magic of Believing, he describes getting the job and being a bit of a Scrooge about it. Still hurting from abuse in his past and determined to be a “serious” actor, he made life for everyone around him harder until the job, and the holiday spirit, softened his heart. Hall also had a lifelong relationship with the jolly old elf himself that better enabled him to step into those big black boots. Enemies became friends, then family, as he warmed to the role. Santa Claus Is for Real is a short, sweet redemption tale.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Christmas season is full of touchstones: Santa with the Rockettes at Radio City, small kindnesses from strangers and boisterous shouts of, “God bless us, every one!” These new books pair nicely with a crackling fire on a frosty night.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Folk rhymes, fine art and families

Feature by Jill Ratzan

Whether you light a menorah every year or are new to the Jewish Festival of Lights, you’ll find something to appreciate among this year’s Hanukkah picture book offerings. All three involve combinations of rhyming verse and fine art, as well as new takes on old traditions.

OLD LADY’S AT IT AGAIN
As the title suggests, Caryn Yacowitz’s I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dreidel is a Hanukkah-themed version of the traditional cumulative rhyme about that notorious woman who swallows a series of rather unusual objects. Starting with a dreidel (she mistakes it for a bagel), the old lady of the title eats her way through various items associated with Hanukkah, including a pitcher of oil (“’bout ready to boil”), a pile of gelt (money) and—of course—eight candles. Readers may look forward to learning the old lady’s ultimate fate, but the highlight of the book comes in the 14 classics of Western painting and sculpture spoofed in David Slonim’s illustrations. From an unusual “Mona Lisa” to “The Starry Night” featuring a giant menorah, this fun offering inspires young readers to explore both Hanukkah traditions and the world of art history.

SING-A-LONG HANUKKAH
There might be no catchier Hanukkah song than folk music icon Woody Guthrie’s “Honeyky Hanukah.” Honeyky Hanukah combines Guthrie’s festive, sometimes-nonsensical words with bold, silly illustrations by Dave Horowitz, showing a family as they dance, play music and enjoying “latkes and goody things all over town.” Once again readers should keep an eye on the paintings on the wall, which allude to classic works by Marc Chagall and other well-known images. While the song works perfectly as rhyming text, an enclosed CD by the band The Klezmatics lets readers add music to the words and pictures. A note at the back of the book explains how Guthrie’s mother-in-law Aliza Greenblatt inspired him to learn about Judaism and explore Jewish themes in his music.

CELEBRATE ALL YEAR
The final book in this year’s roundup is great for Hanukkah or throughout the year. In Here Is the World: A Year of Jewish Holidays, author Lesléa Newman and illustrator Susan Gal take readers through an interracial Jewish family’s year from autumnal Rosh Hashanah to springtime Passover, including a baby naming and the weekly celebration of Shabbat. Each spread includes a rhyming couplet and a detailed charcoal-and-collage drawing in a seasonally appropriate color palette. The words and images evoke the spirit of each important day and show the various objects and settings associated with it. In the back of the book you’ll find longer explanations of each holiday, recipes, craft instructions and ideas for putting Judaism’s commitment to social justice into action. For example, the project for Purim is a noisemaker made from a box of macaroni, for donation to a food pantry after the holiday.

 

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.

Whether you light a menorah every year or are new to the Jewish Festival of Lights, you’ll find something to appreciate among this year’s Hanukkah picture book offerings. All three involve combinations of rhyming verse and fine art, as well as new takes on old traditions.

PhotographyNature

Up close and personal

Feature by Sheila M. Trask

If you’ve seen one book of nature photography, you might think you’ve seen them all. Think again. Get ready to see everything from anemones to elephants in a whole new light.

BACK TO NATURE
Portraitists are known to spend a lot of time working with their subjects to get just the right shot. Acclaimed photographer Susan Middleton does just that, but her subjects are an unusual lot. We’re used to seeing evocative human portraits and even animal portraits, but invertebrate marine life?  Jellyfish, maybe. But flatworms? Slugs? Middleton collects all these animals and many more, and sits with them for hours, waiting to take what can only be called their portraits. The results in Spineless: Portraits of Marine Invertebrates, the Backbone of Life are nothing short of spectacular. Set against a stark backdrop of plain white or black, each image seems full of life and movement, as if set to music. Middleton shares some of her techniques as well as the impetus behind her work: giving a face to the invertebrates that make up 98 percent of our ocean’s animal life, at a time when their environment faces unprecedented challenges.

ALL BUG-EYED
Where Middleton’s jellyfish glide gently across the page, John Hallmén’s magnified images of insects stare boldly out at the viewer. The Swedish nature photographer uses the latest digital technology to create startling color images of beetles, mites, flies and more. Bugs Up Close: A Magnified Look at the Incredible World of Insects features full-page pictures that bring out every detail in these diverse creatures, with extreme close-ups of compound eyes and enlarged pictures of ants that show their individual hairs. Some images are a challenge to understand at first glance, such as the incredibly detailed image of the mouthparts of a tick, but Lars-Åke Janzon’s text offers ample explanation. Each photograph is accompanied by a brief natural history of the insect, along with their common and scientific names. It’s easy to get caught up in the patterns Hallmén highlights in his subjects’ bodies, hair and eyes, but true-sized silhouettes of each insect appear nearby as well, reminding us that these larger-than-life images are just that.

Amazon river dolphins, copyright © 2014 Art Wolfe. From Earth Is My Witness, reprinted with permission from Earth Aware Editions. 

WHOLE WIDE WORLD
At first glance, Art Wolfe’s nature photography feels more familiar than either Middleton’s or Hallmén’s. The sweeping vistas and colorful tribal portraits remind us of National Geographic magazine, and in fact the collection of photographs in Earth Is My Witness: The Photography of Art Wolfe is narrated by the National Geographic Society’s Wade Davis. Wolfe’s body of work, presented here in large format and spanning more than 50 years, truly celebrates photojournalism as an art form. The sheer scope of Wolfe’s work is a bit overwhelming: He has worked on every continent and hundreds of locations around the globe. This collection takes us on some of those journeys, which Wolfe makes accessible with his attention to color, pattern and atmosphere. He captures the geometry of Namibian sand dunes and Ethiopian tribal scarification patterns, as well as the vibrant red clothing of Kenyan Maasai tribesmen and the dazzling, bejeweled headscarves of Rajasthani women in India. Seemingly infinite landscapes pour over two-page spreads and often require additional page folds to hold the wealth of the world that Wolfe observes.

AND I MUST GO
Scaling back to North America, the scenery is no less majestic in America’s Great Hiking Trails, a comprehensive photographic pilgrimage that traverses each of America’s 11 national scenic trails. Photographer and avid hiker Bart Smith was the first person to hike all of these trails—from the Appalachian to the Pacific Crest and all those in between—and he documented every step. Smith’s mostly unpeopled photographs, accompanied by Karen Berger’s informative writing, convey the unique atmosphere of each trail, from the incredibly green, lush swamps of the Florida Trail to the dusty, dry deserts of the Arizona Trail. Smith captures the grandeur and intimacy of walking these trails with images of breathtaking mountaintop vistas and human-sized footpaths across otherwise untouched meadows. Through this contrast, he illustrates humanity’s effect on nature as clearly as nature’s effect on humanity.

CUTTING EDGE
Most books of nature photography are content to illustrate the known world, albeit in new ways. The images selected for William A. Ewing’s new collection, Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography, take that one step further, as the featured artists ask what might have been or what might yet be. Abstract chapter categorizations such as “Sublime,” “Pastoral,” “Rupture,” “Hallucination” and “Reverie” reveal humanity’s hand in the development of the world’s landscapes. Philippe Chancel illustrates the truly skyscraping modern construction in Dubai, and Simon Norfolk’s provocative series depicts one military tank in four seasons in Afghanistan. These contrast with Didier Massard’s otherworldly “Aurora Borealis” and “Mangrove,” which reveal the haunting beauty of the planet, as well as indoor landscapes by Robert Polidori. Ewing’s selections show art’s power not only to observe and document nature, but also to imagine its future.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’ve seen one book of nature photography, you might think you’ve seen them all. Think again. Get ready to see everything from anemones to elephants in a whole new light.

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