Babble

Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box: Cut Yourself Some Slack (and Still Raise Great Kids) in the Age of Extreme Parenting By Ann Dunnewold.

For twenty-five years, psychologist Ann Dunnewold has treated women who fret about bringing store-bought snacks to preschool. "Won't your child be at a disadvantage if you don't hand decorate his Easter basket?" she writes, echoing a supposedly familiar refrain. I decide that any nut job who believes this crap needs more help than a book can give and I settle in, warmed by the smug confidence of my own sanity.

And yet. There was that time on a preschool assessment test where I coached my three-year-old on the right answer. And that time when I inexplicably told a waitress, "That's funny - she always eats broccoli at home." I am that nut job, and by Chapter Five, I'm begrudgingly won over. Dunnewold's tips on how to be a "perfectly good" mom are smart and practical: instead of rehashing everything that went wrong at the end of the day, focus on what went right. If you feel the urge to be Supermom, make sure it's doing that one thing you enjoy. You don't even have to be "perfectly good" all the time: "Perfectly good adds up over time; the marbles are not emptied out of the jar." One of my favorite rules was, "Do what is fun for you. Don't be apologetic about it. When my daughters were small, I decreed playing My Little Pony as a mom-free activity."

Ah – liberation! I have been a Pony-free Mommy ever since.

Practically Perfect In Every Way: My Misadventures Through the World of Self-Help and Back by Jennifer Niesslein.

Niesslein, on the other hand, had me at hello. Any woman who admits that she imagines Oprah just might be talking to her through the television is my kind of nut job. Feeling that she's not sure if she's happy and she doesn't know why, Niesslein embarks on a self-help blitz, tackling everything from her parenting style to her finances to her soul with help from a parade of experts.

I love how Ferber and Sears get equally bitch-slapped on the whole sleep conundrum. I love how she veers wildly between longing for a Pottery Barn home (the chapter on "The House") and imagining living in a trailer to save money ("Finances"). I think I actually peed myself a little laughing when she made her own holy water. Niesslein, who edits the momoir-style magazine Brain, Child, is funny, sweet and snarky. I was genuinely worried about her when she started having panic attacks in the middle of the book, prompted in part by all her self-examination. I don't want to steal her thunder by revealing whether she found her happiness by the end of the book, but I'll tell you this: "You can choose your own adventure," she writes, "but it might not turn out the way you thought it would." — Jennifer V. Hughes

The publishers of daddy memoirs must set requirements for joke ratios along with word counts, because I've yet to read one that didn't crack wise like an improv troupe. The comedy comes fast and furious in both Robert Wilder's Daddy Needs a Drink and Philip Lerman's Dadditude.

Of the two, Wilder's collection of essays about raising his two kids is far more polished and rewarding. A high school English teacher who writes a column of the same name for the Santa Fe Reporter, Wilder's default mode is smartass. He has a knack for letting absurd situations speak for themselves, like the time he dressed up in a second-hand snowman suit for his daughter Poppy's class, or the deliciously mean-spirited essay "Blood on the Tracks," in which he skewers the lunatic teacher of his son London's music class. He's actually at his best, though, when he shelves the ironic metaphors and pop culture punchlines to let some real emotion break through the smirking facade, as in "Crying in America (in Three Parts)," a heartfelt meditation on when grown-ups, not kids, do the crying.

Lerman's Dadditude would have benefitted from this kind of selectivity. Ostensibly, the book is about how Lerman, a former co-executive producer of America's Most Wanted and former national editor of USA Today, became a father at the age of forty-four, and documents the first four years of his son Max's life. But this story could have taken up half of the book's 243 pages. The part that should have been left in the recycle bin is a free-associative ramble, full of dorky jokes, endless asides and annoying generalizations about parenting. The catch is that the other half, the real story, is an incredibly sweet and moving love letter to his son. The two would be impossible to read without each other: the first like a really bad blog, the second, enough to make you gag if you hadn't just slogged through all that Jay Leno humor. But somehow, they complement each other, and by the end, Lerman's sheer enthusiasm for fatherhood was infectious enough to make me like him. — Matt Wood

I judge books by their covers all the time, and this one caught my eye immediately: the mother duck scanning the water nervously while she shields her oblivious ducklings from the predatory mother alligator floating across the way. Who could resist something that looks like a seedy '50s pulp fiction cover remixed with Wild America? The lush acrylic illustrations and gently repetitive text about bayou babies and the lessons their mothers teach them have a wonderful immediacy. Clever layouts ensure that the raccoon family featured in one section of the book appears in the background of the next several pages about baby turtles, who in turn quickly make friends with some fluffy ducklings a few pages later. Older children will sense the danger these other creatures pose; while younger ones, like my nineteen-month-old daughter, will just love identifying all the animals.— Sophie Brookover

If the sky were a mother, then the night would be her child. That's the simple but touching premise behind the newest Yuyi Morales picture book, Little Night, which begins right before bedtime. As Mother Sky fills the bathtub with falling stars, she calls to her little one, but Little Night is a frisky tot and would rather play games than go through her usual nighttime routine. Before she'll consent to a bath, putting on her night clothes, a warm glass of milk, or the brushing of her hair, Little Night wants to play a game of global hide-and-seek. Morales, whose art encompasses a rich dreamscape, has created a true bedtime classic. This book's art glows with the deep reds and purples that linger in the sky at the end of a long summer day, and children adore locating Little Night in each new landscape. As for the words, they perfectly capture the humor and patience found in a loving mother-daughter relationship. — Elizabeth Bird

Without launching into a hand-wringing session about the state of overbooked kids in Manhattan, I will admit that I spend lots of time reassuring my nannying brood that it's okay if they don't want to grow up to be investment bankers and cardiothoracic surgeons. And sure, I pounced on Phillis Gershator's Sky Sweeper because it echoes that sentiment. Sky Sweeper follows the life of Takeboki, who's happy to just sweep the flowers and leaves at a Japanese Buddhist temple, much to the chagrin of his friends and family. Takeboki considers everyone's pleas to do normal things (get a high-profile job, marry, breed) but ultimately decides to keep sweeping. I am positive the kids were too mesmerized by the lush chiyogami collages to digest the book's sweet, zen-like message of inner happiness, but it made me feel better knowing that my weekly heavy-handed attempt to teach them Life Lessons had been accompanied by pretty illustrations. — Annsley Chapman