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NonfictionParentingEducation

The home advantage

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

All four of these featured books take their philosophical cue from the title of Bob Dylan’s album Bringing It All Back Home. The best way to help your kids have fun learning at school is to make your home a place where what happens at school really matters. In the process, you’ll also be helping school become a place where what happens at home—love and support, study habits and simple values—really matters.

WHICH SCHOOL?

We all want our kids to go the best school. The question is, what does “best” mean? Turns out, despite the fact that today’s parents are more educated, motivated and informed than ever, we are short on the skills needed to evaluate the quality of our children’s schools. The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Kids the Education They Deserve can change this. Peg Tyre, author of the best-selling The Trouble with Boys, gives parents a crash course in what to look for. She focuses on “seven essential domains of education” we need to know in order to help preschool, elementary and middle school children. These include test scores, class size, teacher quality and the best practices in teaching reading and math. Each chapter investigates a topic starting with a bit of history, details of current practices (good and bad), a checklist of questions for each school and a handy list of “take aways,” thoughts to keep in mind as you investigate. The checklists in particular make it easy for even the most overwhelmed (or clueless) parent to become “a more sophisticated member of your child’s learning community.”

LIVING TO WRITE

Literacy expert Pam Allyn has already written the definitive book for parents on reading, What to Read When. Now she turns her attention to writing with Your Child’s Writing Life. Why do kids need a “writing life?” Allyn give three research-based reasons: Writing “fosters a child’s emotional growth,” “helps develop critical thinking skills” and “leads to a guaranteed improvement in academic achievement.” Plus, a love of writing is a gift that can last a lifetime.

Parents can unlock a child’s potential with “Five Keys” embedded in the acronym WRITE: word power, ritual, independence, time, environment. These can be tailored to each child’s “personal comfort and unique learning style” and energized with easy, creative prompts. A chapter on the stages of writing development helps parents understand a child’s changing capabilities and enthusiasms. Allyn gives tips on creating an appropriate environment for each stage from birth up, including recommendations for books, activities, toys or materials, plus a list of “writing elements” a child might exhibit. Chapters on common challenges (like fear and frustration), great books to inspire writing and cures for writer’s block (by age group) round out a groundbreaking resource.

BE THE CHANGE

The End of Molasses Classes teaches that home and school should and can “support each other in the education of all children.” Ron Clark, named “America’s Educator,” author of the best-selling The Essential 55 and founder of a revolutionary teaching academy, knows firsthand how a few basic changes can transform a classroom, a school and a child’s entire life. Clark shares 101 strategies, some for teachers, some for parents, all aimed at helping kids succeed, in the best and widest sense of the word.

For example, parents can cultivate drama-free mornings so the school day can start right, read all the communication sent home from school, get to know other school parents, use car time to talk about what children are learning and stop rewarding kids for doing a mediocre job.Examples for any adult include: “set the tone for a love of learning,” “define your expectations and then raise the bar,” “uplift those who help raise your children,” “listen,” “provide students with a chance to shine” and simply “have fun.” Clark will help parents keep molasses un-metaphorical and right where it belongs: on cornbread and biscuits, not in classrooms.

TIMELESS TEACHINGS

When a report card from the year 1915 turned up among a beloved uncle’s effects, authors and family educators Barbara C. Unell and Bob Unell noticed a “Home Report” section completed by parents and returned to the teacher. It included topics like “things made,” “books read,” “money earned,” “manners” and “hours worked,” and, by its very presence, made the assumption that the best education comes from an active partnership between school and home. The discovery inspired Uncle Dan’s Report Card: From Toddlers to Teenagers, Helping Our Children Build Strength of Character with Healthy Habits and Values Every Day. The authors argue that student learning and development is not just about academic achievement, but about the whole child. To succeed in school and in life, all kids “need structure, rules, routines and boundaries to feel calm and secure.” Parents, on the other end, need to know what to teach and how to teach it. The book gives the timeless tools and tips that can inspire kids to want to learn good habits, follow a “commonsense code of conduct” and become more self-sufficient. Everyone wins: parents, teachers, kids and the community.

All four of these featured books take their philosophical cue from the title of Bob Dylan’s album Bringing It All Back Home. The best way to help your kids have fun learning at school is to make your home a place where what happens at school really matters. In the process, you’ll also be helping […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems (Golden Books, $24, 0307440508) by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a myriad of school woes. You’ll find suggestions for helping your child outgrow these problems, ways to recognize signs of serious situations, tips for when to consult a doctor, and lists of further reading.

Of course, parents always have questions just as sure as kids used to get chicken pox. With that in mind, The Parents Answer Book by the editors of Parents magazine is bound to become indispensable. And with 896 pages, it’s got plenty of answers about the health, safety, and development of children from birth through age five. Not only does it contain thoughtful discussions of just about everything under the sun, there are numerous practical pointers as well.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems (Golden Books, $24, 0307440508) by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a myriad of school woes. You’ll find suggestions for helping your child outgrow these problems, ways to recognize signs of serious situations, tips for when to consult a doctor, and lists of further reading.

Of course, parents always have questions just as sure as kids used to get chicken pox. With that in mind, The Parents Answer Book (Golden Books, $35, 0307440605) by the editors of Parents magazine is bound to become indispensable. And with 896 pages, it’s got plenty of answers about the health, safety, and development of children from birth through age five. Not only does it contain thoughtful discussions of just about everything under the sun, there are numerous practical pointers as well.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a myriad of school woes. […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It (Dell Island, $12.95, 0440508126), Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. Her thesis took shape when she was struck with laryngitis and couldn’t give her daughters the praise they’d grown to depend on what she describes as the steady stream of prattle about what a good job she’s doing or what she’d like to do next. She realized her children, and many others, were suffering from what she calls Attention Excess Disorder, which she deems the Malady of the Decade. Cassidy’s ideas are full of common-sense wisdom, delivered in a voice that sounds like a reassuring, often humorous, friend.

I was also riveted to Richard F. Miniter’s The Things I Want Most: The Extraordinary Story of a Boy’s Journey to a Family of His Own, the story of his family’s decision to take in a severely troubled 11-year-old as a foster child. The Miniters had already raised six children of their own and were running an inn in upstate New York. Instead of enjoying some well-earned tranquillity, they brought chaos into their lives in the form of a boy named Mike. This is a book you won’t forget.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It (Dell Island, $12.95, 0440508126), Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It, Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. Her thesis took shape when she was struck with laryngitis and couldn’t give her daughters the praise they’d grown to depend on what she describes as the steady stream of prattle about what a good job she’s doing or what she’d like to do next. She realized her children, and many others, were suffering from what she calls Attention Excess Disorder, which she deems the Malady of the Decade. Cassidy’s ideas are full of common-sense wisdom, delivered in a voice that sounds like a reassuring, often humorous, friend.

I was also riveted to Richard F. Miniter’s The Things I Want Most: The Extraordinary Story of a Boy’s Journey to a Family of His Own (Bantam, $21.95, 0553109332), the story of his family’s decision to take in a severely troubled 11-year-old as a foster child. The Miniters had already raised six children of their own and were running an inn in upstate New York. Instead of enjoying some well-earned tranquillity, they brought chaos into their lives in the form of a boy named Mike. This is a book you won’t forget.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It, Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. Her thesis took shape […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

How should boys be boys? In 1994 Mary Pipher created a stir with her groundbreaking book about adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia. Now it’s the year of the boy, with two titles receiving widespread attention. The first, A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Boys (Tarcher/Putnam, $24.95, 0874779197), is by Michael Gurian, author of the best-selling The Wonder of Boys. Gurian says adolescent males are our most undernurtured population. Much attention, he rightly says, has been given to adolescent girls; now it’s time to give boys what he calls New Models of Manhood, which include compassion, honor, responsibility, and enterprise. Such timeless ideals are hardly new, but Gurian’s thoughts are worth pondering.

In a similar vein, in Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, William Pollack argues that boys are forced to prematurely separate from their mothers at ages five or six. From that time on, we expect them to heed what he calls the Boy Code, to be stoic, rough-and-tumble little men. To make matters worse, Pollack says, society views boys as toxic in other words, psychologically unaware, emotionally unsocialized creatures. And yet as men they are expected to be masculine, communicative, and sensitive. No wonder, he notes, that boys are confused! Pollack concludes: Real boys need people to be with who allow them to show all of their emotions, including their most intense feelings of sadness, disappointment, and fear. Any parent will find this an intriguing, immensely readable book.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

How should boys be boys? In 1994 Mary Pipher created a stir with her groundbreaking book about adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia. Now it’s the year of the boy, with two titles receiving widespread attention. The first, A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Boys (Tarcher/Putnam, […]
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

How should boys be boys? In 1994 Mary Pipher created a stir with her groundbreaking book about adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia. Now it’s the year of the boy, with two titles receiving widespread attention. The first, A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Boys, is by Michael Gurian, author of the best-selling The Wonder of Boys. Gurian says adolescent males are our most undernurtured population. Much attention, he rightly says, has been given to adolescent girls; now it’s time to give boys what he calls New Models of Manhood, which include compassion, honor, responsibility, and enterprise. Such timeless ideals are hardly new, but Gurian’s thoughts are worth pondering.

In a similar vein, in Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (Random House, $24.95, 0375501312; Random House AudioBooks, $18, 0375402918), William Pollack argues that boys are forced to prematurely separate from their mothers at ages five or six. From that time on, we expect them to heed what he calls the Boy Code, to be stoic, rough-and-tumble little men. To make matters worse, Pollack says, society views boys as toxic in other words, psychologically unaware, emotionally unsocialized creatures. And yet as men they are expected to be masculine, communicative, and sensitive. No wonder, he notes, that boys are confused! Pollack concludes: Real boys need people to be with who allow them to show all of their emotions, including their most intense feelings of sadness, disappointment, and fear. Any parent will find this an intriguing, immensely readable book.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

How should boys be boys? In 1994 Mary Pipher created a stir with her groundbreaking book about adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia. Now it’s the year of the boy, with two titles receiving widespread attention. The first, A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Boys, is […]
ParentingMemoir

Experiences only a mother could love

Feature by Amy Scribner

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as a present for Mom or as a gift for yourself.

A GRAND ADVENTURE

Anyone who read Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott’s seminal book on the trials and tribulations of motherhood, will be flabbergasted to learn that her infant son, Sam, is now a 19-year-old father. Although the pregnancy was a surprise, Lamott welcomes her new grandson, Jax, with her hallmark humor and faith (and a healthy dash of neurosis) in Some Assembly Required.

She writes candidly of her mixed feelings about the baby’s mother, a lovely but headstrong young woman who keeps Lamott firmly at arm’s length when it comes to raising Jax. Still, the two women forge a deep, if sometimes fragile, bond as they set about the messy business of building an extended family. Insightful, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Some Assembly Required is Lamott at her very best.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

The subtitle of Making Babies, Anne Enright’s marvelously irreverent look at having children later in life, is “Stumbling into Motherhood,” and that is just what the Irish writer did when she and her husband had their first child after 18 years of marriage.

Is there anything better than a book that doesn’t romanticize pregnancy? When Enright recalls her pregnancy as a time in which she “sat and surfed the Net like some terrible turnip, gagging and leaning back in my chair,” I laughed in agreement. I kept laughing throughout the whole book, including the section called “How to Get Trolleyed While Breastfeeding.” (“Trolleyed” being a very Irish way of saying “drunk.”)

That’s not to say some of that laughter wasn’t through a few tears. Never has the bittersweet impact of motherhood been summed up more poignantly than by Enright. “This is what motherhood has done to me,” she writes. “I cannot watch violent films (I used to quite like violent films), I can’t even watch ones where the violence is ironical (I used to love irony). I cry at all funerals. I look with yearning at the airport road. I am complacent to the point of neglect about my body. I shop where the fat girls shop (it is a different place). For months I do not shop at all.”

Making Babies is a must-read for anyone who’s ever experienced the joys of motherhood—and ’fessed up to its agonies.

TO THE TOP

I was bracing to be slightly annoyed by the ambitious mother and her overachieving mountain-climbing daughter in Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peakbagging Adventure. But Patricia Ellis Herr is no tiger mom, pushing her daughter Alex to the brink. She is simply a mom who recognized her daughter’s boundless energy and helped her harness it.

The duo climbs nearly 50 New England peaks during their year-and-a-half adventure, an amazing accomplishment given that Alex was only five years old when they started. The quest is not without its harrowing moments, such as when Herr forgets to put windproof gloves on Alex and they have to turn back 200 yards from summiting for fear of frostbite. Add to this the fact that Herr’s husband—Alex’s father—lost both his legs to frostbite in a mountain-climbing accident at age 17.

But Up is marked more by the sweet, small moments the mother-and-daughter team experience while climbing, as when Alex asks her mother why a boy told her she can’t be good at math because she’s a girl. Herr’s account is really half hiking reference manual and half meditation on how to instill independence and confidence at a young age—an odd and oddly compelling combination.

TREASURING THE UNEXPECTED

As soon as the doctor laid the baby in her arms, Kelle Hampton knew her daughter had Down syndrome. “I will never forget my daughter in my arms, opening her eyes over and over . . . she locked eyes with mine and stared . . . bore holes into my soul. Love me. Love me. I’m not what you expected, but oh please love me.”

Hampton is best known for her acclaimed blog, Enjoying the Small Things. In Bloom, a searing and brave portrait of her baby’s first year, Hampton opens up about her fears and jubilation, and what she calls “the throbbing pain of losing what I had expected.” She recounts the late nights doing Internet research on what to expect as Nella grew up, and the triumph of their first walk for Down syndrome awareness.

Filled with personal photos from the delivery room through Nella’s first birthday, Bloom gives a whole new meaning to the term “open book.”

SONG OF MYSELF

My Story, My Song is the slim but lyrical memoir of Lucimarian Roberts, the mother of “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts. The elder Roberts, who has become known to GMA viewers through her daughter’s occasional references and a couple of appearances on the program, reveals a delightfully upbeat voice at the age of 87. In the book, co-written with Missy Buchanan, she recalls her racially charged childhood in 1920s Akron, Ohio, her years at historically black Howard University and her experiences as the wife of a career Air Force officer and the mother of four. Primarily, though, My Story, My Song focuses on Roberts’ Christian faith and the gospel music that has been a constant companion throughout her life.

“I sing because the music of the church speaks my soul language,” she writes. “I sing because these songs are tightly woven into the texture of who I am. Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts. Child of God.” Brief reflections from daughter Robin are sprinkled throughout, small but beautiful gems in a truly sparkling book.

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as a present for Mom or as a gift for yourself. […]
ParentingMemoirGraphic Novels & ComicsCookbooksComics

Something special for dear ol’ dad

Feature by Martin Brady

Fathers usually don’t expect much for Father’s Day—a simple hug is plenty. But you could also acknowledge dad with a gift book, which these days might span topics from engineering to sports to cooking. The following selection of new books has dad and his modern-day versatility covered.

REACHING FOR THE SKY

From the publisher of last fall’s wonderful Mountaineers comes another richly illustrated volume that merges information on the lives of remarkable individuals with useful descriptions of their great achievements. Engineers, edited by Adam Hart-Davis, focuses on familiar names such as Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and other world-renowned innovators whose work dramatically changed human lives. But the coverage here—reaching back to the ancient world and through the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, all the way to the Space Age—also extols many lesser known originators of essential engineering feats. The subject matter is far-ranging—aqueducts, ships, steam engines, electricity, airships, the automobile, architecture—in other words, any discipline that falls under the book’s titular category. Besides its plentiful photos and drawings, the text is loaded with informative sidebars and timelines. The technically inclined dad will love it.

LET’S GET COOKING

It’s hard to imagine cooking as an extreme sport, but that’s what we find in Daniel Duane’s How to Cook Like a Man: A Memoir of Cookbook Obsession. Duane is a Bay Area surfer-dude and writer whose entry into the world of fatherhood inspired him to play adventurous chef to his wife and two daughters. He embraces haute cuisine like an ancient warrior, inspired mainly by cookbook author and restaurateur Alice Waters, who happened to be Duane’s preschool teacher many years before. Duane eventually encounters Waters again when she hires him as a writer, but that episode is tangential to his epic crusade through thousands of recipes over an eight-year period. Specific food preps are recounted in some detail, but what Duane does with, say, duck fat, turnips, wild truffles or a whole cow stashed in his freezer is secondary to his fanatical Zen-like food rap and its effects on those around him. The book’s unexpected highlight: the description of a simple egg dish Waters whips up for Duane on the fly—served with a glass of Domaine de Fontsainte rosé.

THREE OF GOLF’S GREATEST

Veteran golf writer James Dodson’s American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf blends social history with biography, focusing on the game’s somewhat shaky mid-20th-century status, when its growth was hampered by the Depression and World War II. Golf’s saviors emerge with Snead, Nelson and Hogan, each born in 1912 and all achieving superstar status, their lively competitions helping to sustain the game’s popularity and eventually spurring a postwar period of prosperity in which tournaments became more plentiful and the purses much larger. Dodson makes the case that this trio provided the historical bridge to the ever-more-prosperous eras of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. More so, his authoritative prose profiles three distinctly different individuals—the gentlemanly Nelson, the maverick Snead and the somewhat misunderstood Hogan—whose love of the game was complete and whose career paths were unavoidably intertwined.

LONG DISTANCE JOURNEY

Scott Jurek is an ultramarathoner whose exploits were profiled in the 2009 bestseller Born to Run. Now this amazing runner tells his own story in Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramara­thon Greatness. With co-writer Steve Friedman, Jurek charts his difficult early life in rural Minnesota, where his mother was ravaged by multiple sclerosis and family dynamics were always challenging. Yet somehow he soldiered on, finishing college, becoming a physical therapist and, most importantly, finding fulfillment as a runner. Achievement in “shorter” marathons led to success in more grueling races, chiefly the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile trek that Jurek won seven straight times. While his personal story is inspiring, the book also focuses on Jurek’s transition to a completely vegan diet. Recipes are included, as are training tips for amateur runners who want to step up their game.

RIDING HIGH

Humorist Dan Zevin, a 40-something father of two, finds himself totally digging his new wheels in Dan Gets a Minivan: Life at the Intersection of Dude and Dad. “Have I told you my minivan has a built-in DVD player?” he gushes, as he embarks on his Brooklyn-based “Mr. Mom” phase. That’s a term Zevin strenuously objects to, but when your wife’s a New York City publishing bigshot and you’re the one hiring nannies. . . . Anyway, Dan’s a modern guy and a very funny writer—so as he narrates the family trip to Disney World, relates his experiences learning tennis and the guitar, relives his court date when he’s cited for not cleaning up after his dog, etc., other dads (and moms) will find plenty of humor in his misadventures. Besides philosophizing on changing priorities and other midlife concerns, Dan also has some endearing moments with his own dad, and those passages are justification enough for this entertaining volume’s Father’s Day relevance.

SUPERHERO TRIVIA

Finally, we have Brian Cronin’s Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent?, which should prove a popular gift for anyone who ever curled up with a comic book. From Batman and Robin to Archie and Jughead, comic book characters have a unique pop history that spans generations. Superfan and blogger Cronin pays homage through dozens of entertaining lists of names (e.g., “Fifteen Alliterative Comic Book Names Created by Stan Lee”), storylines (e.g., “Five Most Iconic Panels in Marvel Comics History”), cultural impact (“Six Bob Dylan References in Comic Books”), TV and movie trivia (“Four Interesting Ways That Actors Lost Out on Superhero Roles”) and more. If it all sounds deliciously geeky, it is.

Fathers usually don’t expect much for Father’s Day—a simple hug is plenty. But you could also acknowledge dad with a gift book, which these days might span topics from engineering to sports to cooking. The following selection of new books has dad and his modern-day versatility covered. REACHING FOR THE SKY From the publisher of last […]
NonfictionParenting

Parenting with passion and purpose

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Fifty years ago, the word “parenting” didn’t even exist. What did parents do before that? Muddle through, mostly—lucky if they didn’t inflict their own problems on their children. These five books indicate that “parenting” these days is not just a neologism; it’s an art form invested with life-enhancing values. Here’s a smattering from the palettes of five wise instructors.

COMPASSIONATE CARE
Dr. Madeline Levine, author of the bestseller The Price of Privilege, presents her exhaustive research with clarity and passion in a compelling new book. To Teach Your Children Well, you need to get your kid off the “Merit Train” (test scores, sports trophies, etc.) and take a walk with them instead. You don’t just “parent” your children; you “mentor” them, bestowing values that matter: a love of learning, a sense of self, compassion for others, a close and caretaking regard for both body and soul and—above all—the resourcefulness to face most challenges. Most—but not all. Levine’s conclusions are wisely and boldly inconclusive. We cannot solve all our children’s problems because we have too many of our own. What we can do is show them that we’re with them all the way, holding tight, being brave together, letting go when it’s right.

CONTEMPLATING SCREEN TIME
James P. Steyer argues that it’s time for parents to start Talking Back to Facebook. He should know: As founder and CEO of the advocacy group Common Sense Media, Steyer has devoted his life to “improving the media lives of kids and families.” Here, he lays out what may be the crucial questions of our time: How can a person develop any self-image when constantly inundated with external images?  How can you uphold for your child the value of face-to-face connections when she is connected to Facebook instead? The author identifies two ways that children are at risk—through a loss of privacy and a loss of innocence. If anything and everyone is available online, these standard childhood privileges disintegrate. Thanks to technology, kids grow up much faster now, shedding their fragile childishness as quickly as possible.

Steyer is no Luddite fool. He celebrates the positive “data points” the Internet gives children, helping them to be more politically and culturally current than any previous generation. Nevertheless, his dire warning remains plain, given eloquent imprimatur by Chelsea Clinton’s foreword: If parents don’t take care, too much media exposure can undermine a child’s life and leave him or her scrambling for selfhood.

MANTRAS FOR MAMAS
The title of Erin Bried’s guide is almost ludicrously modest. How to Rock Your Baby is one of 97—count ’em!—“how to’s” for new moms in this handy book. Of all the instructors in this group of parenting authors, Bried is the most artful. Even her Table of Contents constitutes a work of art unto itself, combining a near-hundredweight of gentle and laconic imperatives for going as gently as possible into that sometimes-not-so-good night of parenthood. Consider this sequence of instructions in the section of the book on “Delivering.” Find Focus. Bear Down. Speak Up. Give Love. Or this set from “Surviving.” Reach Out. Cheer Up. Space Out. Go Out. Reclaim Yourself. Like most moms, I could have used these mantras in the pinched moments of early motherhood when it wasn’t at all clear what to do or how to do it. Concision, simplicity and sweetness are three fundamental and indispensable virtues of Bried’s compendium. Pregnant? Choose Well (another gem from the Table of Contents) and get this book for yourself and your partner.

HAPPY, HEALTHY BÉBÉS
Let’s face it: It seems like we’ll never figure out how to get our kids to eat what we want them to. Meanwhile, Karen Le Billon reports that French Kids Eat Everything. What might we learn from parents across the pond to help us make mealtime less of a tug-of-war and more of a picnic? Le Billon recounts with relish (and lots of different sauces) “how our family moved to France, cured picky eating, banned snacking, and discovered 10 simple rules for raising happy, healthy eaters.” That’s the subtitle of the book, if you can believe it, and it fairly epitomizes the author’s point: To digest anything (whether it’s a morsel of food or an idea), you’ve got to slow down and chew on it. The French have this down. There have been many celebrations of that bon vivant attitude, but this volume about raising Gallic eaters beats them all. Filled with humorous anecdotes, recipes, foodie French nursery rhymes and scintillating cultural inquiry, Le Billon’s adventures take intercontinental flight, showing us it’s not quoi we eat with our kids, but comment we eat it together.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN?
Here’s a book that needs no endorsement: Sally Koslow’s melancholy title says it all to her alarmingly emergent readership. Slouching Toward Adulthood: Observations from the Not-So-Empty Nest packs an unsentimental punch for the growing population of parents with grown-up kids who are home again after college, travel or vocational school—jobless, heart-sore and adrift. Koslow’s “adultescents” are a new phenomenon, different from both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s or even David Foster Wallace’s slouchers, unprecedented in both scope and spiritual danger because of our new century’s perfect storm of economic hardship and over-qualification. “Sobering” is the word for Koslow’s data and hopeful conclusions. We have been drunk— not on alcohol, but on unreasonable expectations. For our lost kids at home, it’s time to dry up and move out.

Fifty years ago, the word “parenting” didn’t even exist. What did parents do before that? Muddle through, mostly—lucky if they didn’t inflict their own problems on their children. These five books indicate that “parenting” these days is not just a neologism; it’s an art form invested with life-enhancing values. Here’s a smattering from the palettes of […]
Parenting

Take it easy: Help for conquering stress

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

It’s official: everyone is stressed out these days. Anyone who doesn’t feel anxious is either a saint, not paying attention or just kidding. The unprecedented frequency of clinical anxiety disorders arises out of a neurotic stew of economic uncertainty and our increasingly hectic day-to-day lives. BookPage has rounded up five new books, each presenting its own set of strategies for overcoming stress.

BEATING STRESS, NATURALLY
Paul Huljich knows about stress in ways that most of us can never imagine. The victim of a nervous breakdown in 1998, he suffered a terrifying loss of freedom and self-determination. But Huljich courageously constructed a happy sequel to his own Kafkaesque story. He researched various avenues for regaining his mental health, and now serves as one of the world’s leading spokespersons on mental wellbeing. In Stress Pandemic: The Lifestyle Solution, Huljich presents “9 Natural Steps to Survive, Master Stress and Live Well.” With matchless authority, he diagnoses the causes and defines the effects of our culture’s submission to stress, and then lays out his ninefold program of self-awareness and recovery. The simplicity of Huljich’s “natural steps”—including the obvious triad of exercise, nutrition and sleep—is balanced by the author’s complex account of his experience with psychiatric medications of all sorts. Here is a guru of organic healing who can be trusted, someone who has returned from the inferno of stress-induced insanity in order to reaffirm the power of the individual will.

A MEDICAL APPROACH
A clinical psychiatrist will naturally address stress in a very different way from Huljich’s holistic program. Dr. Joseph Shrand, a Harvard psychiatry instructor, provides a more dispassionate approach in Manage Your Stress, part of the Harvard Medical Health Series published by St. Martin’s Press. With a scientist’s clarity and restraint, the author, writing with Leigh M. Devine, presents a set of definitions of stress, locating it properly in its biological framework and then proceeding to an understanding of its physiological consequences. “Your body has reacted to the event of being cut off in traffic almost in the same way as if a rhinoceros had charged you,” Shrand writes, describing an individual’s response to stress. “When you experience a stress trigger your heart beats quickly, your palms and body sweat, blood rushes to your face, and your breathing quickens.” We all know the feeling, though we’re often unsure how to deal with it. Shrand draws a careful line between what a person can do for herself to overcome stress and what she must properly lay at the psychiatrist’s door when the problem becomes too large to handle. He saves his most striking (and, alas, newly stress-inducing) statement for the conclusion of the book: It turns out that our prolonged experience of stress can be epigenetically(!) passed down through our genes to our children. Thanks a lot, Dr. Shrand. Do you have an opening next Tuesday?

STRATEGIES FOR ANXIOUS YOUNGSTERS
No parent needs the looming prospect of epigenetics to understand how stressful life can be for kids nowadays. Donna B. Pincus wants to help us help our children build an entire toolbox for dealing with stress. In Growing Up Brave, Pincus, who serves as director of the Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program at Boston University, offers parents “expert strategies”for helping their children cope. By treating almost every conceivable configuration of family dynamics, the book provides a comprehensive array of do’s and don’ts, supported by well-assembled clinical evidence and numerous case studies. Whatever the problem your child is suffering—fear of the dark, fear of dogs, fear of school, or Charlie Brown’s unforgettable state of pantophobia (fear of everything)—Pincus delivers both philosophical principles and pragmatic steps for helping your child climb “the bravery ladder” and then happily throw it away at the top.

LIFE AFTER TRAUMA
We have saved the worst-case scenarios for last. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not only one of the world’s fastest growing maladies, it has also served cultural commentators as a good metaphor for the state of our nation since 9/11. On the individual level, the after-effects of a life-threatening trauma can cripple a person physically and emotionally. In two new books on the subject, the crucial idea for confronting the enormity of trauma is resilience. Both books go so far as to claim that there is a science of resilience. For psychiatrist team Steven M. Southwick and Dennis S. Charney, Resilience is nothing less than The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges. These two physicians are not content with providing clinical data or pharmacological solutions (which are relegated to a brief appendix). They are genuine philosophers—lovers of wisdom—bent upon uncovering all possible sources of empowerment for the resilient human being, including a courageous confrontation of the moral and spiritual dimensions of the still-untapped traumas of 9/11.

Journalist Laurence Gonzales has the award-winning journalist’s knack for telling a vivid story. His Surviving Survival is filled to the brim with tales of survival, of traumas suffered and overcome. It is a gallery of terrible life-and-death moments that arrive and depart with shocking suddenness, but then linger forever in the victim’s mind—from the death of a child to a bomb blast in Iraq. The author argues that it is necessary to cultivate both “The Art and Science of Resilience,” his subtitle. Without a doubt, the first stage of this process will have been achieved by any reader who can survive the relentless litany of trauma and resilience Gonzales so vividly catalogues.

It’s official: everyone is stressed out these days. Anyone who doesn’t feel anxious is either a saint, not paying attention or just kidding. The unprecedented frequency of clinical anxiety disorders arises out of a neurotic stew of economic uncertainty and our increasingly hectic day-to-day lives. BookPage has rounded up five new books, each presenting its […]
NonfictionParentingMemoir

A mother’s gifts last a lifetime

Feature by Alice Cary

How do you approach Mother’s Day? With reverence and joy, or sorrow and trepidation? Are you fulfilled, exhausted or both from being a dutiful child or caretaking parent? No matter what your emotions, these engrossing books about mothers, children and parenting are bound to speak to you.

Particularly wonderful is a collection gathered by Elizabeth Benedict, What My Mother Gave Me. Benedict, who had a trying, distant relationship with her mother, found herself surprised by the intense feelings she had about a long woolen scarf her mother gave her in the last years of her life. She began to wonder: “If this one gift meant so much to me, if it unlocked the door to so much history and such complicated feelings, might other women have such a gift themselves?”

Indeed they do, and their answers come to life in stories from such writers as Ann Hood, Mary Gordon, Elinor Lipman and Mameve Medwed. Lisa See’s mother taught her to pen “a thousand words a day and one charming note,” a work ethic that involves writing steadily and aiming high. Joyce Carol Oates describes the first days of her widow­hood, when she wrapped herself in a rainbow-colored quilt made by her late mother. The quilt became “a sign of how love endures in the most elemental and comforting ways.” And Emma Straub ponders gifts less tangible, such as tickets for a rainy, rather miserable but memorable cruise around a Wisconsin lake. Straub writes: “My own happiness during every terrible minute of the Betty Lou Cruise came from knowing that when it ended, I would get to tell [my mother] about it.”

BIG FAT GREEK LOVE

For some, the road to motherhood can be fraught with formidable roadblocks, as was the case for actress Nia Vardalos, the famed actress and writer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She tells her story in Instant Mom, which is as compelling, witty and wonderful as her now-classic movie about Greek family life. While Vardalos filmed the movie, went on press tours and was eventually nominated for an Oscar, she was desperately enduring a series of fertility treatments and heartbreaking miscarriages. Her dream of becoming a mother was finally fulfilled in 2008 when she and her husband became the unimaginably proud parents of a 3-year-old daughter that they adopted via the foster-care system. “After years of praying to be parents,” Vardalos says, “this little miracle simply appeared.”

The first few months involved exhausting efforts by all to acclimate and build trust, and Vardalos never sugarcoats the details, though she always buffers them with her and her husband’s complete joy and adoration of their headstrong, vivacious little girl. Vardalos brings readers along for a delightful ride as she navigates the toddler and preschool years, ending the story with a helpful question-and-answer section about the adoptive process. Her goal is to educate her readers about adoption, and she achieves it in an endlessly entertaining fashion.

SHARED LAUGHTER

Comedian Carol Burnett also has a powerful mothering story to share. Like many, I grew up watching “The Carol Burnett Show” and still grin at the thought of her Tarzan yell and the unflappable Mrs. Wiggins. Now Burnett bares her soul in her touching memoir, Carrie and Me.

Carrie Hamilton was the oldest of Burnett’s three daughters, a young woman who shared both her mother’s looks and her wide-ranging talent as an actress and singer. Burnett highlights the great triumphs and tragedies of her beloved daughter’s life, filling in details with stories, diary entries and letters. The pair went public in 1979 about Carrie’s adolescent struggle with drugs and alcohol—a multi-year battle from which she ultimately emerged victorious. Mother and daughter later collaborated on a play about Carol’s early life, and the adult Carrie lived in a Colorado cabin while writing a story called “Sunrise in Memphis,” which is included in the book.

Sadly, Carrie’s bold spirit and artistic talent were cut short by lung cancer in 2002. Carol and Carrie were lucky to have each other, and their ironclad bond shines through in this short but sweet memoir.

A LIFE RENEWED

Like Nia Vardalos, Glennon Doyle Melton became something of an instant mom, but in a very different way. On Mother’s Day 2002, this unwed 26-year-old was shocked to discover she was pregnant. What’s more, she was battling bulimia, alcohol and drug addiction. Happily, her life of struggle has become one of triumph, which she describes in Carry On, Warrior.

Becoming a wife and mother was a turning point for Melton, who is now the mother of three and the successful creator of the blog Momastery.com, some essays from which are collected here. She calls herself a “reckless truth teller,” and like Anne Lamott (one of her favorite writers), Melton has dedicated her life not only to her family but to religious faith and humor. She explains that once her husband and first child entered her life, she realized, “If two such good, kind, full people needed and wanted and loved me, could I really be so worthless? Suddenly, it seemed that there might be parts of life that were beautiful and good and meant for ME.”

All four of these books will make readers laugh and cry in recognition, and think more deeply about their own roots and relationships.

How do you approach Mother’s Day? With reverence and joy, or sorrow and trepidation? Are you fulfilled, exhausted or both from being a dutiful child or caretaking parent? No matter what your emotions, these engrossing books about mothers, children and parenting are bound to speak to you. Particularly wonderful is a collection gathered by Elizabeth […]
ParentingMemoirFilmBiography

Special treats for special dads

Feature by Martin Brady

Father’s Day 2013 brings with it memoirs, nostalgia pieces, books on child-rearing (specifically from Dad’s POV) and also interesting volumes related to golf’s singular, imaginative hold on the father-son bond. We can’t review every item that made it over the transom, but here’s a sampler of our favorites.

SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND

In an epic mix of sprawling journalism and personal memoir, veteran magazine writer Stephen Rodrick presents The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey into His Father’s Life, in which he searches for clues to the mystery of his dad, a U.S. Navy pilot who crashed into the Indian Ocean in 1979 during maneuvers that were part of America’s response to the Iranian hostage crisis of that year. Rodrick, only 13 at the time, here acknowledges the resulting emotional gaps and confusion in his family’s life, and sets out to grapple with his own dysfunction while also investigating his father’s past to gain perspective on the man and on the military lifestyle in general, especially as it affects spouses and children. Rodrick’s approach is nothing if not frank, and at the risk of alienating those he loves, he emerges triumphant, purging some personal demons and seeming to gain a better understanding of what family means.

There are some interesting thematic similarities to Rodrick’s work in The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA, in which former Newsweek foreign correspondent Scott C. Johnson recounts his curiously peripatetic upbringing and makes an effort to understand his father and his unlikely profession. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that Johnson learned his dad was a CIA agent. Looking back, Johnson recounts the veil of deception that always seemed to shroud his father’s attitudes, demeanor and social activities. Questions remain unanswered for years, yet some clarity emerges right before 9/11, when son elicits from father an understanding of his notions of patriotism and morality. Later, while working as an international reporter in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, Johnson begins to find parallels in his own work, mainly in its secretive nature and its reliance on a certain kind of trust. With a scope spanning the Cold War and the war on terror, Johnson’s father-son memoir offers a rare glimpse of family, from separation to hard-won reconciliation.

LIFE ON THE LINKS

In Loopers: A Caddie’s Twenty-Year Golf Odyssey, professional golf caddy turned journalist John Dunn offers an engaging and surprisingly gritty approach to the sport’s literature. Against his father’s wishes, Dunn takes up the life of an itinerant caddy, and this volume essentially covers his episodic, two-decade journey across the U.S. working at golf courses great and small. Dunn makes it inside Augusta National Golf Club, manages to cross paths with celebrities and titans of industry, even travels across the pond to St. Andrews. It’s a gypsy existence that sometimes demands a scrappy persistence and a lot of compromises, yet Dunn’s account makes clear that his “a breed apart” personality is a good match for the vagabond lifestyle, which includes its fair share of fun and adventure. The book comes full circle when Dunn must confront his father’s imminent death from cancer. Closure occurs as the book reaches its poignant end, and golf’s linkage to the relationship between fathers and sons resonates once again.

TWO BIG DADDIES

Actor Steve Schirripa has had some great roles. Formerly the entertainment director of the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, he then parlayed his connections there into both TV and big-screen roles, mainly on “The Sopranos” as Bobby Bacala. Fact is, Schirripa is bigger than life. And while his new book, Big Daddy’s Rules: Raising Daughters Is Tougher Than I Look, written with Philip Lerman, definitely has a tongue-in-cheek feel to it, the tough-guy approach he espouses to child-rearing is heartfelt and refreshingly commonsensical. For Schirripa, it’s about protection—plus it’s his conviction that when parents assert an authoritative stance, kids will push boundaries more reasonably (and hence maybe end up with fewer tattoos!). This is parenting the old-school way, laced with tales from the trenches and committed advice on how to bring kids through the tough years, including discussion of topics like dating and sex, drinking and drugs, the value of money and hard work, and more.

“Today, big families are like waterbed stores; they used to be everywhere, and now they are just weird.” So says popular comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan, the author of Dad Is Fat but more tellingly the father of five young children, who, as of this writing, live with him and his “very fertile wife, Jeannie” in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Unsurprisingly, Gaffigan’s new book reads like one big extended stand-up routine about family life in general and the challenges of parenting a large brood in particular. Fans of the author’s sharp, dry wit will definitely be amused. The book is peppered with warm, candid photos of Gaffigans young and old.

AN AMERICAN ICON

Finally, there’s John Wayne: The Genuine Article, a coffee-table book suitable for the movie legend’s fans. Wayne was a dad, of course—son Ethan provides the preface here—and certainly was an authoritative film figure who epitomized the rugged American male. Michael Goldman’s text offers a welcome rundown of Duke’s life, from his almost accidental entry into the movies to his iconic rise in celluloid and later status as patriotic figure, with concluding chapters sharing a glimpse into Wayne’s personal moments and memories as a father. The plentiful graphic material includes reproductions of rare personal documents, family photos, letters to and from Hollywood stars and politicians, shooting-script excerpts from various Wayne flicks and other memorabilia.

Father’s Day 2013 brings with it memoirs, nostalgia pieces, books on child-rearing (specifically from Dad’s POV) and also interesting volumes related to golf’s singular, imaginative hold on the father-son bond. We can’t review every item that made it over the transom, but here’s a sampler of our favorites. SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND In an epic mix […]

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