nonfiction

with pop-up texts that are only fitfully functional, this quick but
informative tour scores high for its overall design, easy navigation,
optional audio and cartoon illustrations highlighted by caricatures
livened up with small animations. And where else will readers learn
that “Jean-Paul Sartre was afraid of being chased by lobsters”
An airy but far-from-superficial spin past Big Questions
and some of the thinkers who have tackled them. (coloring
page) (iPad informational app. 10 & up)
books in
continuing series
SNIVEL
The Fifth
Circle of Heck
Basye, Dale E.
Illus. by Bob Dob
Random House (448 pp.)
$16.99 | PLB $19.99
May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0- 375-86834-4
PLB: 978-0-375-96834-1
(Fantasy. 9-13)
THE PUZZLER’S
MANSION
The Puzzling World
of Winston Breen, #3
Berlin, Eric
Putnam (288 pp.)
$16.99 | May 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25697-4
(Fiction. 8-12)
THE BEAST OF
BASKERVILLE
Deadtime Stories
Cascone, Annette & Gina
Starscape (192 pp.)
$14.99 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3067-3
(Horror. 8-12)
LADYBUG GIRL
AND BINGO
Ladybug Girl, #7
Davis, Jacky
Illus. by David Soman
Dial (40 pp.)
$16.99 | May 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3582-8
(Picture book. 3-5)
THE CASE OF THE
RUBY SLIPPERS
First Kids
Mysteries, #3
Freeman, Martha
Holiday House (124 pp.)
$16.95 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2409-2
(Mystery. 7-10)
FINALLY & FOREVER
Katie Weldon, #4
Gunn, Robin Jones
Zondervan (256 pp.)
paper $9.99 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-310-72971-6
(Fiction. 12 & up)
BACK AND DEADER
THAN EVER
Monster High, #4
Harrison, Lisi
Poppy/Little, Brown (240 pp.)
$17.99 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-09917-2
(Paranormal. 12 & up)
JUST GRACE
AND THE FLOWER
GIRL POWER
Just Grace, #8
Harper, Charise Mericle
Illus. by the author
Houghton Mifflin (208 pp.)
$15.99 | May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-57720-3
(Fiction. 6-9)
THE DRAGON
IN THE SEA
Dragon Keepers, #5
Klimo, Kate
Illus. by John Shroades
Random House (224 pp.)
$15.99 | PLB $18.99
May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-87065-1
PLB: 978-0-375-97065-8
(Fantasy. 8-12)
PHANTOM OF THE
POST OFFICE
43 Old Cemetery
Road, #4
Klise, Kate
Illus. by M. Sarah Klise
Harcourt (160 pp.)
$15.99 | May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-51974-6
(Suspense. 9-12)
PEARL AND WAGNER:
Five Days Till
Summer
McMullan, Kate
Illus. by R.W. Alley
Dial (40 pp.)
$15.99 | May 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3589-7
(Early reader. 5-8)
CREEPING WITH
THE ENEMY
Langdon Prep, #2
Reid, Kimberly
Dafina (256 pp.)
paper $9.95 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-61480-5
(Mystery. 14 & up)
HAIR TODAY,
GONE TOMORROW
Stella Batts, #2
Sheinmel, Courtney
Illus. by Jennifer A. Bell
Sleeping Bear (144 pp.)
$9.99 | paper $5.99
Apr. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58536-189-2
paper: 978-1-58536-191-5
(Fiction. 5-9)
SEVEN LITTLE MICE
GO TO THE BEACH
Seven Little Mice, #3
Yamashita, Haruo
NorthSouth (32 pp.)
$16.95 | May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4073-7
(Picture book. 4-8)
This Issue’s Contributors
#
Kim Becnel • Marcie Bovetz • Sophie Brookover • Louise Brueggemann • Timothy
Capehart • Ann Childs • Julie Cummins • GraceAnne A. DeCandido • Dave
DeChristopher • Elise DeGuiseppi • Carol Edwards • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn
• Omar Gallaga • Judith Gire • Ruth I. Gordon • Heather L. Hepler • Megan Honig •
Jennifer Hubert • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Laura Jenkins • Betsy Judkins
• Deborah Kaplan • K. Lesley Knieriem • Robin Fogle Kurz • Megan Lambert • Angela
Leeper • Peter Lewis • Ellen Loughran • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Lauren Maggio
• Joan Malewitz • Jeanne McDermott • Kathie Meizner • Daniel Meyer • Lisa Moore •
R. Moore • Donna Marie Nowak • Kathleen Odean • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine •
Melissa Rabey • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Kristy Raffensberger • Nancy Thalia Reynolds •
Melissa Riddle Chalos • Erika Rohrbach • Leslie L. Rounds • Mindy Schanback • Dean
Schneider • Chris Shoemaker • Karyn N. Silverman • Robin Smith • Edward T. Sullivan •
Deborah D. Taylor • S.D. Winston • Monica D. Wyatt • Melissa Yurechko •
Self-publishing has opened an incredible
number of doors—not just for authors but
for readers, too. With well over 1 million
books self-published a year, those doors
won’t be closing anytime soon. Of course
the sheer quantity of self-published books
is astounding—after all, everyone has a
story to tell, and sharing that story with
thousands, or even millions, of people has
never been easier or less expensive—but
what may be more surprising is the quality
of self-published books ready to be discovered.
At Kirkus Indie, we’ve offered
professional, unbiased reviews of selfpublished
books since 2005, so we’re intimately
aware of how great these books
can be. Some have even earned Kirkus
stars. So read on and visit kirkusreviews.
com/indie for an exciting look at books
made possible by self-publishing.
9
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
NOTES TO THE BELOVED by Michelle Bitting ........................... p. 883
THE DUKE DON’T DANCE by Richard Sharp ............................. p. 887
indie
NOTES TO
THE BELOVED
Bitting, Michelle
Sacramento Poetry
Center Press (92 pp.)
$15.00 paperback | Jan. 15, 2012
978-0983136231
Bitting (Good Friday Kiss, 2008, etc.)
returns with earthy, adventurous and
existential free verse.
Bitting is the rare poet who clearly
understands that sublimity is never more than one overwrought
image away from absurdity. Though clearly capable of the
sublime, she is careful to counterbalance the sacred with the
profane and the transcendent with the commonplace in crafting
what is, on the whole, a forcefully well-proportioned collection.
In “Mammary,” for instance, narrator and reader are
transported by a chain of associations from the highway sights
outside the narrator’s car to visions of her friend’s body as she
undergoes a mastectomy. What begins as psychological free
association grows increasingly mystical (and worshipful) as the
narrator evokes Promethean suffering—“I imagine birds and
flight / as the elliptical sweep of sharpness / cuts the pale sky of
your chest, / steel beaks of surgical tools / carving out the flesh
cream, / making smoke of tumor meat”—before resurrecting
her friend’s breasts as “two blond angels, / flying out / beyond
the moon’s milky scar” to “spread their innocence.” As counterweight
to such moments of profound pathos, Bitting demystifies
some of life’s most hallowed experiences, such as in “Birth,”
a darkly humorous portrayal of childbirth as a telescoping series
of indignities in which a Demerol-injected mother on “a Jimi
Hendrix acid trip” greets her “baby’s head galumphing / through
the ravaged pit” with “a sphincter blast of feces.” Between these
extremes, this collection covers a lot of ground—music, death,
sex, family, autism, suicide, aging, food—but it always does so
from the perspective of a thoroughly embodied narrator. There
is a comfortable, even epicurean, egocentrism to Bitting’s narrators
that insists on the primacy of the sensual. In this way, and
in the way her narrators respond to mortality by burrowing even
further into their own skins, Bitting proves herself a sister poet
to Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds and Sheryl St. Germain. Yet even
with her range, lighter poems like “His Hat,” a comic come-on
to Johnny Depp, sometimes feel like filler.
Not a perfect collection—but it comes close.
882 | 15 april 2012 | children’s & teen | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | indie | 15 april 2012 | 883