Review by Booklist Review
Animals and humans are a lot alike. Just ask Erma Bombeck. "Consider the camel. He has yellow teeth, corns, and halitosis. . . . Don't tell me you haven't had a blind date that matches that description." Bombeck continues to make her case in one of her funniest books to date. She uses animal facts to lead off each chapter: a depressed polar bear, she reports, was given a beach ball covered with peanut butter to lick; a smart move, according to Bombeck, since "comfort food has long been a treatment for boredom for the the woman who is home alone. It isn't until her rear end begins to look like a Woodstock parking lot that she realizes licking peanut butter off a beach ball is not the answer to her problems." Erma goes on in this vein, showing how a lion who has been known to mate 86 times in one day deserves a spot on Oprah, and that while the cockroach has the ability to endure for 300 million years, so does a pot of split pea soup or a fruitcake. Bombeck, one of the first female humorists, started writing about the idiosyncrasies of life (especially domestic life) 30 years ago, back when Roseanne still had one personality. Now funny females abound, in print and on screen, but Bombeck proves she's still got what it takes to trade jokes with any of them. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1995)0060177888Ilene Cooper
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When syndicated newspaper columnist Bombeck compares gorillas' show-off behavior to the attention-getting ploys of Madonna, Howard Stern, Roseanne and other ``professional exhibitionists,'' one feels she may be onto something. Although many of these 38 lighthearted pieces, which seek out loose parallels between Homo sapiens and the rest of the animal kingdom, don't click, those that do are irreverent, funny and sassy, like her put-down of the men's movement or her survey of sex in the 1990s. There are several awful groaners here, as when the bestselling humorist leaps from the cockroach's eons-old longevity to the ``longevity'' of Christmas fruitcake. A lot of her animal-based observations on humans' mating and courtship habits, emotional makeup and struggle for survival are superficial. Nevertheless, fans will enjoy Bombeck's wry comments on toilet-training toddlers; men's superiority complex about driving a car; women's dieting and compulsion to hoard things; and how to encourage creative play in children. $300,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Bombeck carries on in the best tradition of Bombeck with her latest collection of short, humorous, piercingly accurate looks at the human condition. This time around, she leads off each essay with an observation of the animal kingdom. For example, Bombeck lets us know about the female African elephant, whose gestation period is 660 days and who nurses her newborns (300 pounds with stretchmarks no less). From there she launches into an account of human pregnancy, covering such areas as frozen embryos. She writes, "It gives new meaning to the question, `Daddy, where did I come from?'. `You were thawed in Milwaukee, son.'" Bombeck is a perennial favorite, and there's no reason to think that this won't be in as much demand as her last 11 books.-Carol Spielman Lezak, General Learning Corp., Northbrook, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Here's Erma, to human beings what Jane Goodall is to chimpanzeesan ardent student and a whole lot funnier. In fact, as Bombeck (A Marriage Made in Heaven . . . Or Too Tired for an Affair, 1993, etc.) puts it, ``The breakthrough hit me like a bolt. Jane and I were studying the same species.'' A pungent fact heading each chapter on the curious way in which animals eat, mate, play, travel, or cope with boredom launches Bombeck on her favorite subject, the even more curious behavior of men, women, and children. African elephants may be able to breed until they're 90 years old, but baby boomers are pushing to catch up, with a 59-year-old woman giving birth to twins. Not a good idea to go much further, Bombeck muses: ``It's too risky for a woman to put a baby down and not remember where she left it.'' Lost dolphins lead her to men who can't ask for directions, injured deer to alternative medicine, the speed of cheetahs to the IRS, Gus the bored bear to the bizarre guests on talk shows, a bird who walks on water to the men's movement, and dinosaurs to Milwaukee's Mall of America. Some of the connections are a stretch, like ``putting a pair of size A panty-hose . . . over [a] size C torso''; and some of the acerbic anecdotes will be repetitious to Bombeck fans. However, even refurbished material gleams in the light of her good-humored affection for her fellow humans and her gift for summing up their foibles in pithy one- liners. Not the best of Bombeck, but as always, a welcome poke at the misguided dieters, shoppers, spouses, TV hosts, and others in the animal kingdom who prize propriety over a belly laugh. ($400,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild selection; first serial to Good Housekeeping)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
