Review: Girlology

Have you noticed that the 80's are back in fashion? There's something disconcerting about seeing pre-teen girls wearing the exact same style of clothing that I wore when I was their age in the mid-eighties.

After reading the latest book on my Parent Bloggers review shelf, I realized that I shouldn't be surprised. Fashions never change and neither do all those questions that every teenage girl is afraid to ask. The only thing that's different now is that it's a lot easier to get answers. The right answers? That's a whole different story.

Girlology: Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups, and Holding Out is a book of questions and answers for teen girls, written by Melisa Holmes (an ob-gyn) and Trish Hutchison (a pediatrician.) The topics cover the adolescent angst spectrum from acne to alcohol, ADD to STDs, hormones to hymens. The answers are quick and easy, and best of all honest.

Each chapter also begins with a short story called "She Did What?" The author's say that the names in the stories have been changed, but the stories themselves are real. These sections have that signature after-school special feel to them. And just like the after-school specials of my youth, they're not necessarily artfully written, but I secretly enjoyed them anyway.

I was surprised at how interested I was in reading Girlology. I'm about 20 years too late for it to be helpful to me and about 20 years too early for it to be helpful to me in talking to Annabella. And yet, I was still fascinated by the topics and still surprised at how much I still didn't know about the opposite sex.

Is this book for you?

If you're a teenage girl? Yes. If you're the mother, father, friend, teacher, or confidant of a teenage girl? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

These days the questions that my kids ask me are fascinating and fun to answer. The most complicated Annabella has gotten lately was "Why do girls get to wear leotards to gymnastics and boys just wear regular clothes?" I realize that with the diapers, baby gates, and temper tantrums, so go these easy questions. I'm not saying that Girlology will offer all the answers, but I do hope that when the time comes it will give Annabella and I a place to start the conversation.

Review: Flirting in Cars

I know, I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, right? But when you see a headless women wearing pedal pushers and high-heeled shoes on the cover of a novel, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be like inside. This was the case with the latest MotherTalk book tour selection, Flirting in Cars, by Alisa Kwitney.

First, I must come clean and admit that I don't read chick lit or mommy lit. I totally understand escapism, but mine usually takes the form of Gilmore Girls re-runs or mommy blogs. But, when the latest list of MotherTalk books came up for review, I decided to expand my horizons. Most of the books I've read lately have been chosen by my book club. We have a strange way of voting on books and for some reason our selections have been pretty depressing. We've read novels about prisoners of war, leprosy, down syndrome, the apocalypse, and female circumcision. Sometimes it's not so much that we're a book club, but a self-flagellation circle, with wine.

To take a break from such dark and serious fare I chose to read Flirting in Cars. It's the story of a Zoe, a forty-one year old journalist and mother who moves from Manhattan to the country so her daughter can go to a school that will do a better job of catering to her learning disability. The book is told in the alternating points of view of Zoe and Mack, a thirty-something army vet who was born and raised in the small town where Zoe moves. Zoe can't drive. Mack is a driving instructor. You get the picture.

There are lots of obstacles in their relationship -- Zoe's love of organic goat cheese versus Mack's love of pepperoni pizza, the fact that Zoe's daughter Maya still sleeps in her bed, their different religions, and a ten year age difference. What makes this more than just a simple "opposites attract" story is the way Kwitney writes about the interesting conflict that comes from the fact that Mack works for Zoe and when they start a relationship he starts to feel like a kept man.

The characters and scenery of the town where Zoe moves are colorful and quirky and in their best moments they remind me of one of my favorite novels, Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Throughout the book, Kwitney also creates some really interesting scenes with funny dialog. The story gets going right away with a pretty hilarious interaction between Zoe and a pushy, young Manhattan mom who's interested in buying Zoe's apartment. However, despite the author's attempt at endearing Zoe to readers by comparing her to a far worse version of the self-absorbed metropolitan mommy, I still found Zoe sort of elitist and annoying. I appreciate that she's independent and that living in a small town makes her change, but I never connected to her in a way that I think I need to to enjoy the novel, escapist or not. I found Mack slightly more interesting, but I really never connected to him either and often wondered why he put up with Zoe.

I'd like to say that Flirting in Cars made me appreciate chick lit and want to read more, but it didn't. Right now my book club is reading Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. And despite the fact that I've read and re-read the first three chapters and still have very little idea of what's going on, I feel like I'm getting something more out of it than I would from lighter lit.

Review: Word World

It was with trepidation that I agreed to do a Parent Bloggers Network review of World World, the new PBS show for kids that premieres on September 3, 2007. My kids don't watch that much TV and not necessarily by my choice.

But I know I can't keep my kids away from television forever, so they may as well be watching something educational. And Word World comes with a pedigree -- it was developed by leading literacy experts and partly funded by the Department of Education.

In the interest of full disclosure, PBS sent me a free DVD of two 11 minute episodes of Word World. We brought it with us to Chicago and Annabella (age 4) was hooked. She watched each episode several times on the plane. In Chicago our friend Caleb (age 2) also enjoyed the show, although he lost interest after about five minutes.

Word World stars "The Word Friends," cartoon animals that are made of letters. For example, the dog is made of the letters D-O-G. In fact, many of the objects in World World are made of the letters that make up the word the object is. If I'm not making any sense, check the Word World Web site to see for yourself.

Did Word World teach Annabella to read or help her become more "reading ready?" I have no idea. My totally personal, unprofessional opinion is that if we'd spent the time actually reading or just interacting instead of watching the DVD, that probably would have done more good. Most experts recommend that you watch these kinds of shows with your kids, but if you're anything like me then you watch these shows while you can take a break to do something else.

Word World is aimed at 3-5 year olds, which I respect since I'm definitely against all the TV that's shown to babies these days, especially considering that recent study that says that infants might be better off watching American Idol.   

Review: The Other Mother

I've been thinking about the so-called mommy wars (the rift between stay-at-home moms and working moms) since as far back as this post in 2004. The biggest change I've seen since then is how many other people are thinking about it.

There's no shortage of non-fiction books that feed the fires of the mommy wars, namely Caitlin Flanagan's To Hell With All That, Linda Hirschman's Get to Work, and Leslie Bennetts' The Feminine Mistake. And although I haven't read any of these books, I'm glad they exist, because I appreciate the dialogue that they've encouraged.

I also disagree with writers who argue that there are no mommy wars. As someone who works from home, I don't feel like I'm in a battle against mothers who take care of their children full time or mothers who work outside of the home full time. Instead, I experience a constant battle within myself about whether I've made the right choice. Ultimately, I feel like I've struck the best balance I can, but I imagine that I'm not the only person whose tumultuous feelings result in criticizing other people who've made other choices.

As I mentioned, I've read a lot about books about the mommy wars, but I've never actually read any of the books. The topic interests me, but I just don't read that much non-fiction. That's why I agreed to take part in MotherTalk's virtual book tour for Gwendolyn Gross', The Other Mother, a literary novel about the mommy wars.

The Other Mother is the fictionalized story of two neighbors: Thea, a stay-at-home mom, and Amanda, a full-time working mom. The narrative shifts back and forth between Thea and Amanda's points of view and Gross captures the emotions of these two women beautifully, especially the drastic differences in how they perceive the same encounters. Mothering exhausts Thea, but to Amanda she appears unflappable.

Thea and Amanda justify their own choices based on the choices that the other has made. "I never imagined working when they were so young," Thea says to Amanda. To which Amanda retorts,"I never imagined not working."

The characters in The Other Mother are much more developed and feel much more real to me than the working mother or stay-at-home mother stereotypes I often see in novels and films. I found it interesting that Gross chose to portray the the stay-at-home mom at her most vulnerable point (when all of her kids are almost in school) and the working mom at hers (when she has a newborn at home).

My only complaint about the book is that I wish the plot could have been a little more compelling, especially toward the end.

If you want to read more about the mommy wars, but you're not interested in spending your precious free time reading non-fiction, pick up a copy of The Other Mother, by Gwendolyn Gross.

The publisher of The Other Mother sent me two extra uncorrected proofs of the book to give away here. If you're interested in reading the book for yourself, post a comment below about your own experience with the mommy wars and I will choose two commenters at random tomorrow and contact you so I can send each of you a copy of the book.

UPDATE: I randomly picked Amy and ComputerGuyinGrandBlanc to receive the extra copies of the book. Thanks to everyone who left comments.

Review: The Bilingual Edge

When The Parent Bloggers Network asked me to review, The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language, I jumped at the chance. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about teaching our kids to speak Spanish. This may seem like a strange choice since all the Spanish I know I learned from the first seven episodes of the podcast, Coffee Break Spanish. But I think learning a language makes kids appreciate other cultures. Plus, I don't want my kids to have the same struggle I did, postponing their first experience with another language until high school.

The Why

I had mixed feelings about the reasons the authors give for teaching your children another language. I really liked the emphasis they put on how learning another language helps promote cross-cultural understanding. At the same time, even the title of the book ("The Bilingual Edge") implies that I want to teach my child another language so that they have an edge against other children. To me this is part of the same trend I wrote about last month, when parents send their kids to kindergarten later so they're more advanced and have an "edge" against other kids. To be fair, the writers also stress many other reasons to teach your child another language. And I don't blame them for the today's competitive parenting.

The How

The Bilingual Edge is written by Kendall King and Alison Mackey, who are both are Ph.Ds in linguistics. They're also the parents of young children themselves. They know how busy families can be and they offer second language-learning strategies for parents that are both useful and practical.

They emphasize that learning a new language must be fun. Sing songs, read books, or count in another language each time you walk up the stairs. I tried this by saying "uno, dos, tres" before I gave my boys a big giant push on the swings. They were counting to three in Spanish after the third time. I'm not even sure they know how to count to three in English. The words stuck with them too. The next time we went to the park they said, "Let's do 'uno, dos, tres'."

King and Mackey's strategies are also already working for me, even though I'm still learning Spanish. They write, "Children have an amazing ability to learn language, and acquisition occurs even though adults do not always speak perfectly or do not actively teach them a language."

Yet, some of the examples they give make learning a second language venture into the territory of the over-scheduled child. Consider the example they give of the two year old whose parents want her to learn Japanese and Spanish. The two year old takes music and movement classes in Spanish, gets a Spanish lesson once a week, has a Japanese night once a week where they speak only in Japanese, and her parents have a Japanese student come over once a week to play with her. I feel pretty strongly about the fact that as parents it is not our job to constantly entertain or educate our children. I have a strict "one extra-curricular activity at a time" rule for my kids, so an example like this one kind of turns me off.

The Myths

The authors of The Bilingual Edge also do a great job of addressing the myths and realities of teaching a child another language. When I've told people that I'm trying to teach my kids Spanish, the response I often get is, "They don't even know how to speak English." King and Mackey have lots of research to back up their claim that kids don't mix up languages as their learning them.

The authors also clear up a common misconception about how kids learn language. King and Mackey must recognize that if they'd come out with "The Bilingual Edge Video series" complete with puppets and pictures of farm scenes they probably could have made themselves a lot of cash. But they debunk the popular theory that young kids can learn another language by watching videos, TV programs, or by playing with bilingual toys. The authors insist that kids need to try out their new language skills on someone who will respond to them.

If you've ever given any thought to teaching your child or children another language, but you don't know where to start, I definitely suggest you grab a copy of the Bilingual Edge. For more information, also see the Bilingual Edge Web site.

This review was sponsored in part by The Parent Bloggers Network. They send me free copies of the books, but I choose which books I'd like to review based on what interests me and what I think might interest you. For more information, see this post. If you have any feedback about these reviews, please post in the comment section or e-mail me.