A daughter’s tender homage to a consequential woman.
One happy family.
Human rights activist Kennedy, with the assistance of Maryanne Vollers, creates a “Valentine” to her mother Ethel Kennedy (1928-2024), celebrating “the meaningful life she chose to live in the face of devastating loss, and how faith, hope, and family sustained her.” Drawing in part on family letters and her mother’s unpublished memoir, Kennedy portrays Ethel as indomitable, juggling 11 kids, a sprawling household, and energetic involvement in public life with apparent calm and good humor. Their home, Hickory Hill in McLean, Virginia, was always bubbling with activity. It was a place, Kennedy writes, “where Mum and Daddy created their own world of ideas, fun, faith, duty, and hijinks with a revolving cast of characters and a menagerie of pets”: eight horses, various reptiles, roosters and hens, and, at one point, 16 dogs. Although Ethel was pregnant for 99 months during her married life, with ample household help, she was on the road, at her husband’s side, or speaking out for justice and equality, sometimes right until her water broke. When Robert was assassinated in 1968, his pregnant widow coped by diving into relentless activity and daily prayer. Although the children were “traumatized,” Ethel never addressed their pain. “We didn’t discuss the circumstances of Daddy’s death,” Kennedy writes, “or how we felt about the immense emptiness in our lives, or the nightmares that filled our sleep—if we were able to sleep at all.” She reprises national events from the time her father and uncle entered politics, including their various campaigns and the crises they encountered at home (racial conflicts) and abroad (the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam). This well-trodden narrative reads quite differently when the protagonists are Daddy, Uncle Jack, Aunt Jackie, and Mum: American history sounds like a family affair.
A daughter’s tender homage to a consequential woman.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780063454958
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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