13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin (William Morrow, December 2014) is a practical self-help book to help people develop better habits and make emotionally strong decisions. The lengthy subtitle is “Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success.” The “habits to break”

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Most kids would be happy when their parents don’t make them eat their broccoli. But ten-year-old Charlie wants his parents to care for him. As is, they care more than the endangered animals they travel the world to help. It’s only when his parents leave him with his TV-obsessed grandparents and Charlie solves a small-town

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Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind is about the literacy project of the same name that focuses on improving children’s access to language from day one. In the first three years of life, children should hear 30 million words to improve their chances for learning and growth for their entire life! I enjoyed reading the research

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At first, I thought Teaching Kids to Think by Darlene Sweetland and Ron Stolberg (Sourcebooks, March 2015) had a deceptive title. I had thought it would be  about helping kids learn and logic through academics. Rather, Teaching Kids to Think is focused on helping parents raise children that think through the basics of everyday survival and life, emphasizing

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How to Talk So Kills Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (originally published in 1980) is a classic parenting book for resolving conflicts between parents and children. The authors encourage parents to give children a scaffold with which to approach the world about them. Although it is a

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The Princess Problem by Rebecca Hains (Sourcebooks, September 1, 2014) focuses on the issues surrounding the princess culture so rampant in our nation among the youngest of girls. Ms. Hains focuses on the problem with  an emphasis on princesses among young girls, the issues of what is portrayed in the popular princess movies, and what

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I never used to use parenting books as a go-to when I struggled with an issue with my kids, but I’m finding that reading parenting books gives me nice reminders that I need. Mindful Discipline:A Loving Approach to Setting Limits and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child  by Shauna Shapiro and Chris White (New Harbinger Publications, June 2014)

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When I first saw it in the Netgalley catalog, I was startled by the title It’s OK Not to Share and Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids by Heather Shumaker (Tarcher, 2012). Not share? Isn’t that the first thing we teach our babies during play dates? I was delighted by some of the

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How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin, 2012) is a volume exploring why certain children succeed, despite the odds. He focuses on the children who are most struggling. Some of them succeed, by going to college and becoming successful, contributing members of society. What in their

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Mem Fox is a successful children’s book author and literacy expert. Her expertise in Reading Magic (Harcourt 2001) comes across as personal and passionate, mostly because she writes foremost from her position as a mother. Her main point in writing this book is to read aloud to our children, making it a fun time and

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