Book Reviews
 
 

Review Types

Reviews for Parents
Reviews for Students
 
 

Reviews for Parents and Teachers

Title: How to Talk So Kids Can Learn
By: Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish, with Lisa Nyberg and Rosalyn Templeton
Availability: At your local bookstore
This is a wonderful new book by the authors of the previous bestsellers "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk" and "Siblings Without Rivalry", outlines ways both parents and teachers can help children become independent, self-motivated, excited and capable learners by making simple changes in the way information and feelings are communicated. The book is easy to read and entertaining, and the suggestions thoughtful. It also includes a very useful chapter in home-school communications and the parent teacher conference.

Title: Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five
By: Penelope Leach
Availability: At your local bookstore
This book is an indispensable resource for parents of babies and preschoolers! It not only presents a lot of information on child development, it is beautifully illustrated with photographs and easy to use. Information is organized both by age and activity (e.g., eating, sleeping, language development). A glossary provides directions for simple, inexpensive, make-it-yourself toys that help aid a child's intellectual and physical development.

Title: Teaching Your Children Values
By: Linda and Richard Eyre
Availability: At your local bookstore
These authors raised nine children. In this book, which covers twelve different values, including honesty, courage, self-discipline and respect, they discuss what they learned and why teaching children values is important for both the child and the family. Each chapter contains an overview of a value, general guidelines for teaching, activities appropriate for preschoolers, elementary age children, and teenagers, and illustrations from the authors' own experience. Full of sound advice, good humor, and obvious love for and understanding of children.

Title: What to Do When Kids Are Mean to Your Child
By: Elin McCoy
Availability: Free Spirit Press (1-800-735-7323 or www.freespirit.com)
If you have a child who is picked on or teased at home or at school, this book will help you understand why some kids are mean to others, when to intervene, and how to help your child. It's easy to read, full of practical advice and solutions, and illustrated by many real life stories. You'll know you're not alone.

Title: Raising Your Spirited Child
By: Mary Kurcinka
Availability: At your local bookstore
If friends and relatives have labeled your child as "difficult", "stubborn" or "strong willed" this book may be for you! It is addressed to the parents of the children who are simply more intense than the average child: more energetic, more sensitive (to noise, light, touch, etc.), more emotional, more persistent, more resistant to change, more distractible. It offers lots of useful information to help you understand your child, and many, many helpful tips to help both you and your child both cope with and enjoy this child's special and "spirited" personality.

Title:  Stop Struggling with Your Child
By:Evonne Weinhaus and Karen Friedman
Availablility:At your local bookstore, HarperPerennial Publishers, 1991
Peggy North-Jones recommended this book at a Parents as Teachers Conference several years ago.  The two St. Louis authors offer "quick-tip" parenting solutions for children ages 4-12.  They provide practical ways to prevent power struggles with your children, such as using structure, building responsibility, short-circuiting power struggles and maximizing self esteem.  Particularly useful are the examples of specific statements which are helpful, and not so helpful, to use when speaking to children.  If you know a child that tends to provoke struggles, this is a valuable resource.

Title:  Raising Cain, Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
By:Daniel Kindlon and Michael Thompson
Availablility:Daniel Boone Public Library, Call # 305.23/KIN and at local bookstores
The authors are both psychologists who have been consultants for all-boys independent schools in Boston.  Kindlon is a member of the Harvard University faculty.  He teaches child psychology and conducts research in child development.  Their many years of first hand experience  provides great depth to this book.  Their main aim is to help parents and teachers understand and work with their boy's emotions.  They emphasize that emotional intelligence is an important tool missing in many boys' lives.  This book helps one to understand boys'
bold energy and their great sensitivities.  They provide practical advise for working with boys.  There are disturbing sections, such as the chapter on "The Culture of Cruelty" which provides  an eye opening account of the tormenting many boys receive on a regular basis.  There are also many tender accounts of parents' true love for their sons and a reminder that some day we will miss all of their boldness.  This book is a must for anyone living and working with boys.

Title:  Parenting with Love and Logic
By:Foster Cline and Jim Fay
Availablility:Daniel Boone Public Library, Call # 649.1/CLI and at local bookstores
The main ideas of the "Love and Logic" series are straightforward.  We need to teach children that they are responsible for their own actions and we need to provide logical consequences for their actions.  Of course if this was so easy to do their books, tapes, and workshops wouldn't be so popular!  Their advice is sound and conveyed with humor and practical examples.  They provide some very useful advise that does help make our children more responsible.  Jim Fay has spoken in Columbia several times.  Several groups are trained using the "Love and Logic" techniques.  Jeanette French, director of "Mother's Day Out", gives a wonderful presentation and includes valuable examples from her own children.