High Maintenance Mom

We've been searching for books for B to read that are age-appropriate but at his reading level. Several of the books he could read are either too scary or deal with "coming of age" topics that I would like to save until he's a little closer to that age. It turns out that Scholastic Books has a great new feature called the Teacher Book Wizard. The Teacher Book Wizard helps you find other books that are similar to the ones you know your child already likes. It gives you a summary of the book, gives an interest grade level and the reading level. Below are a few of our favorites...

Maurice Sendak is celebrating his 80th birthday at a gala at the 92nd street Y in New York on Monday. He is one of my favorite children's authors and I will never forget being taken to a Sendak event as a child. It was at a bookstore in Philly and there were so many enticing books. I remember how excited I was that my parents were interested in the same books I was. I felt so grown up. Now I get to relive all the fun reading Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Nutshell Library and other Maurice Sendak with my kids.

Summer Reading Programs are an excellent way to introduce kids to the joys of libraries and reading. Many libraries now have Listening and Parent programs too so everyone can participate. Reading to your kids is one of the best ways to prepare them for school and help them develop lifelong reading skills (Reading is Fundamental). Last year was B's first year in the Reading program instead of the Listening program and it was very exciting. We still read to him but we also had him read a little bit almost every night. Reading the same books over an over really helped as did finding a very simple series that he found interesting. Each child learns to read at a different rate and making the process enjoyable is very important. N and I snuggle with books in the evening. I let him finish the words at the end of rhyming sentences he knows and I occasionally point out words so he starts to learn more about how I read. Check out Read*Write*Now! for more information on reading to kids from birth until the 6th grade.

I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Dr Richard Ferber, Director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children's Hospital in Boston and author of Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, recently and brushed up on my knowledge (via Dr Ferber and other's books) on sleep and how to achieve it in babies and toddlers. I have been blessed with two good sleepers but that doesnt mean we havent had our late nights and frustrating moments. In our family sleep and nutrition rank highest on the "must get right" scale. While Dr Ferber is clearly a well respected doctor and author, he is not an excellent public speaker. If you had not read his book, the lecture would have been too broad and short for you to gain much insight. Having said that, I am glad I went because just by the amount of parents who brought their kids to the 7:30pm lecture, I could tell we had it good!

I recently attended a talk by Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. It was a fabulous talk and I recommend the book. Levine talked about how we give birth twice, once to our fantasy child and the later to the real child. I feel as though I'm working on our fourth as I struggle to see our second child as his own person, not his brother, not my first version of a perfect child, and not my now modified version of what he could be...

I have always been a bit skeptical of parenting books because there are so many of them authored by so many people (doctors, Moms of many children, etc). I was on the look out for a direct, fact filled book for babies and one for toddlers. I found the perfect books for each, Baby 411 and Toddler 411. Both are written by Dr Ari Brown and Denise Fields and they are full of practical information that is not sugar coated or fluffy.

In Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days we follow Dashti, a maid, and her mistress through a journey that requires inner strength. The mistress and maid are locked in a tower after the mistress refuses to marry a man she despises. Dashti, the maid, writes of their time together and how she deals with the tasks she must perform to keep them alive. Along the way we find Dashti, who was brought up with nothing, happy and able to deal with difficult circumstances...

The new HMM picks include the LeapFrog Leapster® Learning Game System, My Book About Me, and MGA Play Smarter Cook'n Learn Kitchen.

LeapFrog's Leapster - We bought a Leapster before a hospital visit and it has been a huge success. We ended up waiting at the hospital for three hours in the morning and it was used for most of that time (we also read books together). Now that the Leapster is at home, both kids are using it. They love trying to collect carrots in the math and letters games that are included.

After finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass), I was looking for another fun young adult novel to read. Lily Dale: Awakening, filled the void with the story of Calla, a typical teen whose world is turned upside down when her mother dies and she takes off to spend the summer in Lily Dale with her psychic grandmother...

Looking for bilingual resources for the Kindergirl, I came across this really excellent online library of children's books from around the world: International Children's Digital Library They have a straightforward mechanism for paging through the books, easy enough for a five year old, and a very nice search facility (though I have yet to crack the code behind the book cover colors): Simple Search