Vanstone, Victoria. Mumming: A Year of Trying (and Failing) to Be a Better Parent. 2025. 320p. ISBN 9780645858099.
Victoria Vanstone initially envisioned herself as the quintessential organized mom, but instead found herself becoming a parent who sometimes resorts to shouting and throwing things. Determined to bridge this gap between expectation and reality, Victoria commits to a year of personal and parental development.
Her year of self-improvement encompasses everything from enrolling in a parenting course and attempting an exercise routine to navigating the complex world of adult friendships and even taking a solo vacation away from her family. Through these varied and often failed experiments, Victoria discovers that imperfection is not only inevitable but can also be the source of joy and a path to a more fulfilling family life.
Mumming is a heartwarming and side-splitting read that celebrates the messy, authentic, and often funny reality of parenting. This memoir offers a hilarious and deeply relatable look at one mother's journey to reinvent herself and her parenting style, often through a series of comical missteps.
Borelli, Jessica, and Stacy Doan. Nature Meets Nurture: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids. 2022. 350p. ISBN 9781433833106.
Whether a person is shaped by their environment, their family, or their hard wiring remains a source of debate, with research pointing to both sides of the arguments to describe why some individuals are successful despite poor genetic conditions or an inadequate environment, while others have both and seem to not amount to much. In Nature Meets Nurture, the latest investigations on brain science, epigenetics, and social research are analyzed, translated into plain English, and applied to specific situations to demonstrate skills and actions parents can take to help their child exceed the debate of nature versus nurture and instead support whole person emotional well-being.
Genetics are very important, and influence a child even before birth. But they are not the end of the conversation. The environment that surrounds the child, even before birth, also has a direct impact on the child's development in the womb, and, following birth, their emotional bonding. Strategies to deploy the best of genetics and environmental circumstances are presented, with the goal of creating a more resilient child, equipped with skills designed to reduce stress, promote social awareness, and improve learning.
With so much stress in our lives, whether nature or nurture has a larger influence on a person is moot. We need to deal with both, and we need to incorporate the best that each bring to ensure that children can grow into well-loved and successful individuals.
Lai, Lee. Stone Fruit. 2021. 236p. ISBN 9781683964261.
Ray and her sister Amanda always fought as children, and their relationship as adults is not much better. Ray did agree to help out with Nessie, Amanda's daughter, when Amanda went through a painful divorce, and now Auntie Ray takes Nessie on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Ray is in a couple with Bron, another woman whom Amanda doesn't like much, but Nessie adores Bron, who comes up with the best games and songs outside. At six, Nessie doesn't care about relationships and just wants to have fun.
Tensions simmer between Ray and Bron on one hand, and Ray and Amanda on the other. Bron needs space, and can't be emotionally there for Ray as she figures out what is happening in her life. She returns to her parents, a couple who is deeply religious, and to her little sister, who turned 16 and understands more than Bron could express. Left alone, Ray wallows in despair, but then decide to patch up her relationship with her sister, while Nessie demands to know what has happened to Bron.
Working to figure out who they are and how they should relate to one another, the triangle between Ray, Bron and Amanda is difficult at time to observe, but as each character grow, they discover that their lives may not be as different as they thought they were.
Klune, TJ. The House in the Cerulean Sea. 2020. 398p. ISBN 9781250217288. Available as an ebook on Overdrive.
For the last seventeen years, Linus Baker has worked as a case worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, the organization that governs how young people imbued with magical powers and abilities are supervised and "protected." his job consists of visiting orphanages where magical youths are placed, observing the conditions, and reporting back through an exhaustive report to the Department. Linus is good at what he does, but at 40 he has no friends aside from his cat, and lives a very lonely life.
When Linus gets called away from his desk to meet with Extremely Upper Management, he is distraught. What could he have done that would warrant such attention? His supervisor, Mrs. Jenkins, all but threatens him to keep quiet about his working conditions, but she shouldn't have worried. Extremely Upper Management tasks Linus to undertake a secret mission. He is to travel to Marsyas Island and spend a month there observing the operations of the local orphanage. The whole task is classified level 4, and when Linus is finally given seven files for the six children and the headmaster, he literally faints. Arthur Parnassus, the headmaster, runs the school in an isolated location, across from a small village only reached by ferry. Six children presently live at the orphanage, and all of them are deemed extremely dangerous.
There is the gnome Talia, who at 263 years old is about to enter her gnomish teenage years. A great gardener, Talia threatens Lucas with burying him in her garden where no one will ever find him. There is Theodore, one of the last wyverns left alive, and who is accumulating a hoard of buttons under the couch since he is small enough to fit there. There is Chauncey, a green blob akin to a jelly fish, but no one quite know what he is, and whose dream in life is to become a bellhop. There is Sid, who turns into a Pomeranian when scared and who doesn't talk much but has the heart of a poet. There is Fi, a sprite who controls plants and who can talk to tree. And there is Lucy, a sweet six year old who also happens to be the son of the Anti-Christ.
Extremely Upper Management expects Linus to observe and use his well-developed sense of fairness to gauge whether the orphanage should remain open or whether it should be closed. Greeted by Zoe, the sprite of Marsyas island, Linus discovers that things will be more complicated than he thought. As he learns more about the children, he also grows close to the enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, and realizes that things are not as they have been portrayed by Extremely Upper Management. Linus is soon faced with a terrible choice: Risk his comfortable life and take a chance on Arthur and the children, or risk watching the whole world be destroyed at the hands of the devil's child.
A delightful tale that reminds the reader of Far Far Away, The House in the Cerulean Sea explores issues of fairness and nature versus nurture. It is possible for individuals to escape their circumstances and become greater and better than their heritage, something Linus learns during his stay at the orphanage. Fans of light fantasy will love this book!
Levine, Stuart P. Dr. Seuss. Part of the Importance Of series. 2001. 112p. ISBN 978-1-56006-748-9. Available at 813 LEV on the library shelves.
Growing up, Theodor Giesel loved to draw funny pictures and play with words. His childhood home was filled with books, and his mother strongly encouraged him to read. His father, who first worked in the family brewery, transitioned to running the public park system in Springfield, Massachusetts, and was in charge of the zoo. Young Theodore thus spent a lot of time reading books and watching zoo animals.
He completed a degree at Dartmouth, then went to Oxford to do a doctorate but left to pursue his artistic inclinations, first as an illustrator for magazines, then for advertisement, before he released a children's book in 1937 called And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Completely different than most young reader primers, Dr. Seuss' first book featured rhymes and strange illustrations that fostered a love of reading. This new approach would change the world of beginner books.
Giesel worked in propaganda for the U.S. Army during the Second World War, and returned to writing children's books, creating such beloved gems as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat. An obsolete child, as he liked to call himself, Dr. Seuss never truly grew up, and retained an attachment to what children enjoyed reading. After more than 60 books, movies, and theme parks, Dr. Seuss's creations remain beloved by millions, proving that children can become excellent readers.
