A very intriguing, very well written book, about six friends who meet at a New England camp for the arts in the 1970s, and what happens to them all as they grow up. The characters were real, in that I liked them, didn't like them, understood them, didn't understand them. But the whole book was tinged with sadness. It felt like no one ever truly got what they wanted in life. And I'm an optimist. If you don't like what life doles out, do your best to change it. I kept waiting for the book to get more positive, and it never quite got there. So in the end, it was a worthwhile read, just laced with more disappointment than I had been looking for.
Practical Wisdom for Parents: Raising Self-Confident Children in the Preschool Years, by Nancy Schulman and Ellen Birnbaum.
Exactly like the title advertises: good practical wisdom. What do you do when..... type of questions and answers. The book is divided into section on "school" and "home," and I liked the latter more than the former. It dealt with everything from toilet-training to moving houses to transitions to siblings to pretend play to buying toys to holidays to grocery shopping to illness, and had very good suggestions for all of it.
The main reason I didn't like the school section as much was because it left me a little horrified at the state of the NY preschool system. It talks about what to do in the child's interview, how to fill out the preschool application, and what to do if a kid doesn't get into a good one! A whole chapter emphasizes over and over not to put the kids in more than 2 after-school activities a week, and touts the value of free play and unstructured time with parents. This is a no-brainer to me. And also, why I could never live in the greater NY area, if that's the expectation.
I very much appreciate your book reviews. Your objective assessment of the content, and then your personal views are valuable in determining whether that's a book I would want to spend time reading.
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