NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman

My mother was a genius. And her mom as well. They knew that children function better with consistent sleep. They knew that empty praise makes kids suspicious, while heartfelt, suitably rare praise fills them with pride. They made it clear that telling the truth was always much more important than the original misbehavior. They counseled [...]

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

Within the space of this novel the 11-year old narrator of Tomato Girl has to contend with a mentally-ill mother, an adulterous father, a dead chick, a resurrected chick (different chick), incest, a miscarriage (not hers but witnessed and assisted by her), epilepsy (again, not hers), and many more minor mishaps. That’s a little much for [...]

An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is a memoir about having a stillborn baby, and it improbably opens with a hilarious misunderstanding, in a French hospital since the parents lived there at the time, of why one may want to speak with a dwarf after suffering such a loss. Ah, the perils of [...]

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

What an odd book! The Good Thief is a Dickens-like novel written by a contemporary author. Set in New England during colonial times, it describes the fantastic life of Ren, an orphan missing a hand who is growing up in a Catholic orphanage and is claimed unexpectedly by a man who says he’s his brother but [...]

Forward from Here by Reeve Lindbergh

Forward from Here is a mix of memoir and essays on being “young in old age”, which for the author means turning 60. It also brings the last high school graduation in the family, a brain tumor (yikes!), turtles, and hot tubs that don’t fit into the front door. Reeve Lindbergh is one of Charles Lindbergh’s [...]

Too Much of a Good Thing by Dan Kindlon

Too Much of a Good Thing addresses the gnawing anxiety of comfortable parents, that amongst the riches that surround our children we may be missing the boat on other, more important ingredients of education so our children may end up adrift rather than successful.
Drawing on a survey of teens and their parents as well as [...]

Beautiful Boy by David Scheff

Beautiful Boy describes every parent’s nightmare: the addicted kid (to meth, of all possible horrible choices!) The author is a journalist and tries to tell the story from an impartial, outside perspective – but his anguish pokes through the surface. He seems very convinced that his divorce from the boy’s mother created all the problems, [...]

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

WIth a wonderful, dreamy start on a remote island in the midst of civil war where the children are entranced by their (volunteer) teacher’s reading of Dicken’s Great Expectations, Mister Pip dead-ends into a forgettable ending, but the first 100 pages are a wonderful escape into a far-away world. I imagine it’s even better if [...]

My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

I read My Lobotomy several months ago but, having heard a radio program featuring the author, I thought I would share this disturbing and awkward book. My Lobotomy is the story of how an exasperating but profoundly normal kid clashed with his rigid stepmother and ended up lobotomized by an unscrupulous doctor without his father’s [...]