Ask Moxie

Book Review: The Mighty Queens of Freeville

This is a review of the book The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson. It was part of a MotherTalk blog tour, so they sent me the book and an Amazon gift certificate for reviewing the book.

The reason I took this book to review is that it's written by Amy Dickinson, who writes the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy." And since I write an advice column, I thought it might be an interesting glimpse into what the life of a different advice columnist (read: one who gets paid for doing it) is like.

But it's not really about that. What it is about is bumbling your way into a happy life after your Plan A--getting married to someone you love and having a family with him--goes south.

Amy is an engaging writer, and makes all of her misadventures (and she had a ton of them as a single mom) sound simultaneously pitiful and picturesque. I think some people have this idea that anyone that's decent at giving advice must have it all together and be perfect. (If you've been reading this site for any length of time you know that's seriously NOT TRUE, but some people still think that.) Amy exposes all her weaknesses, but in such a charming and self-effacing way that you really do just want to be her friend. I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out with someone who writes this deadpan passage:

One time my mother and I were talking on the phone about our cats--one of our favorite topics. We liked to trade anecdotes about themand then decide which movie stars would be best suited to playing them in a movie.

I mean, really, that kind of unselfconscious geekdom just delights me. And she's just as open about dating misadventures, jobs, housing, the doubts she felt as a parent, and general existential crisis stuff.

The running thread of the book is the town of Freeville, New York, and Amy's extended family, mostly women (the "queens" in the title). I have to confess that I wish she'd write a sequel to this first book that would be exclusively stories of these women. They reminded me a lot of the women of my own family (we are a truly formidable group when all sitting around in the kitchen solving the world's problems), and made me homesick for my people and the Midwest.

I enjoyed this book because it gave me faith that people can recover from failure, even if it takes a few years, and end up doing meaningful work and having a happy family and finding love. Maybe I should reread it every few weeks just to stay on track, until Dickinson writes the next book that's only about her relatives.

Book title for a reader?

This just in, from Laura:

"My question/plea of the day is....can you help with the name of a book I know I read about on your site? At some point over the last 12 months, a book on one post --- somewhere--at some point--by someone.....(you are starting to see my dilema)....i know i got the info from your site but can't seem to pull it back out of the archives! The book sounded wonderful but I can NOT remember the details like name or what topic to search your site under. I tried the book reviews but nope....so is there another step to searching for a title linked within your reader's posts or might you just off the top of your head remember such a book?

I think the book in question was actually suggested by another poster who had experienced loads of trauma herself and was 'relearning' what was 'normal' functional behaviour/boundaries and integrating the book into balanced parenting for herself. Then again...perhaps it was a book you had reviewed and people were commenting on it....argh! The subject was learning what normal looks like and how to get there...or something to that effect."

I have no idea what she's talking about, so it must have been in the comments section. I know one of you must have posted it, so please post it again to help a sister on her road to mental health and better parenting.

Book Review: The Stay-At-Home Survival Guide

Review of The Stay-At-Home Survival Guide by Melissa Stanton. This is a Mothertalk review, which means they sent me the book and I get an Amazon gift certificate for putting up a review.

I loved this book. There are a couple books I recommend without reservation, and this is one of them. I don't think you'll get much out of it if you're not a SAH parent and don't plan to be one, but if you are or have been or want to be or are planning to be a SAH mother, you will get something out of this book.

The first strength of this book is that the author had a big career, then was home for a year with her first child, went back to work more-than-full-time for a few years, and is not back at home with her (now) three kids (including a set of twins, one of whom has special needs). So she's seen the gig from a lot of different angles. There were things I took for granted about being at home before I went back, and I know I'd have a different view of being at home now if I could go back to thatom and I think the book does a good job of picking out things that are unique to the at-home gig, but also universal to at-home moms.

The second strength of this book is that it hits the correct topics. The central tension of being at home, IME, is that tug-of-war between wanting to be with your kids all the time and feeling like you're missing something by being at home. (I think the flip side is the central tension of WOH--being out in the working world, but feeling like you're missing something with your kids.) And that's one of the central themes of this book. It is not at all one of those "yes it can be tough but SAH moms are riding along on a cloud of rainbows raising the future of the world" books. It acknowledges that there are many reasons women stay home to care for their children, and that sometimes it's not because that's what they'd choose if the choice was really possible. It gives equal weight to the joy and also the tedious nature of being at home, and discusses the very real sacrifices women make to stay home.

The chapter on finances, in particular, is strong. I've seen other things about finances for SAHM, and they all seem to be about how to economize on paper towels to stretch your family's money. Stanton's chapter on SAHM finances stresses knowing what your finances are, different ways of dividing the labor and responsibility of keeping track of money, and making sure you are not left in the lurch if your partner dies or you separate.

Another big theme of the book is laying on the table the idea that being a SAHM sometimes ends up being a 24/7 job, and one that your partner devalues because you aren't contributing any money. That's something that causes tons of pain for lots of women (as seen in the comments on yesterday's post here, for example), and there doesn't seem to be an answer. The right thing, clearly, is for a partner to look around and realize that forcing one person to be on duty all the time while the other's work hours are limited to 40-60 hours a week is patently ridiculous. But there are still partners out there who seem to think that they deserve a break while their wives do not. Stanton doesn't have an answer for that (neither do I, for that matter), but she discusses it and gives examples and commentary from a bunch of SAH women on the way it works in their households.

This book doesn't tell you what to do (except to keep your resume updated). It explores the light side and the dark side emotionally and logistically of being at home with your kids. It gives a bunch of data points. It doesn't blow smoke up your skirt about how great it is, or how horrible it is. It acknowledges that you're a person--not just a role, not "just" a mother, not just a political demographic. In short, it's a lot like you guys do for each other here.

Now for the bad parts: Honestly, I only have a couple of teeny minor points with this book: She uses the word "gal" a lot, she assumes most SAHMs have cars, and the only reason she acknowledges for divorce is adultery. (It seems like I know half a dozen women getting divorced right now at the same time I am, and only two of them--neither of them me--has adultery as a factor in the divorce.) But those are really, really minor points, and I'm only mentioning them so you know I actually read the book. Overall, I thought The Stay-At-Home Survival Guide took on the major emotional topics involved in being a SAH parent. I highly recommend it for anyone considering doing it or who's in the middle of it right now.

DVD Review: Pretend With Miss Kim

I don't do a lot of DVD reviewing in general, but I took this copy because it's live-action, with real human beings. Remember back when we were kids, and you could see real people on kids' TV all the time? Not anymore. It's all cartoons or CGI. And that kind of makes me a little nuts. So when I got the offer to review Pretend With Miss Kim, I accepted it, even though I figured my boys wouldn't be that interested in a DVD with girls in pink leotards.

But I think I've created a monster, because now my almost-3-year-old wants to watch "Pee-tend wit' Miss Kim, Mama!" all. the. time. When Miss Kim has them get out their pretend paintbrushes to paint colors, he gets his out and pretends to paint. When she does the story that helps them practice beginning ballet moves, he puts his feet together and stretches and bends right along with them. When she sings "Mr. Sun" and I sing along, he says, "Mom, his name is Mr. Golden Sun, not Mr. Sun!" He laughs hysterically when they bounce the stuffed bunny doll on the parachute. (Watch samples of the DVD at Miss Kim's site.)

And the 6-year-old, as jaded by the rigors of Kindergarten as he is, can't really pretend he's watching it in an ironic way, either. Yeah, he makes fun of Miss Kim's strong North Carolina accent (the 3-year-old doesn't notice it, like he doesn't notice my grandma's deep Minnesotan accent) and the fact that all the girls are wearing pink leotards, some with skirts. But he also sings along when he thinks I'm not paying attention. And he knows all the names of the girls in the class. And he thinks Miss Kim's hair is beautiful. And it inspired a discussion about how in the south kids call grownups Miss Firstname and Mr. Firstname and why people don't do that in the north.

So live-action is a hit, and pretend is a hit, just like it was back in the heyday of Mister Rogers.

From the parent point of view, Miss Kim is easy-going and charming, and has a good way with the girls. This DVD is very girl-focused, and she talks about lipstick and pretty dresses at one point, so if you're trying to avoid that then this is not the DVD for you. If you're OK with your girls hearing about wearing lipstick, or you have boy toddlers, this DVD is going to be a hit, and a good thing to rotate in with the construction and train-related DVDs you probably already have. Target age range for this is around 2 to around 4.

My only complaint is that the run time is only 16 minutes. Pretend With Miss Kim is only US$10, but I'd pay twice as much for twice as much pretend time. Maybe Miss Kim will do another, longer session in a year or two. In the meantime, this is just the thing for when you need a short break, or just enough time to hop in the shower or toss in some laundry.

Book Review: The Ten-Year Nap (with questions for everyone at the bottom of the post)

Review of The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, modern fiction.

The first 25 pages of The Ten-Year Nap made me think that the nap is about staying at home with your children, and that waking up from that nap means going back into the paid workforce. I thought this book was going to be a wry exploration of why and how upper-middle-class women in Manhattan stayed home with their kids, and when they'd finally come to their senses or bow to social or financial pressure to go back.

But, oh, did I underestimate it. Wolitzer's book is, in fact, a wry exploration of the fears and resignation and daze middle class and upper-middle class women walk around with all the time. The nap is actually this tunnel you wander into when you become a mother and all you need or can give is love and attention to mundane, minute detail.

Wolitzer's four main characters are all SAHMs, and we get to see things from each of their points of view at different times in the book. They each have different issues, but all are struggling with what their mission in life is. How their passions have shifted or stayed the same, and what they should be focusing on now that their children don't need them on a minute-by-minute basis anymore.

I think she could just as easily have written the book about a group of four WOHMs. The things they talked about might have shifted slightly from the conversations of the SAHMs, but the essence of their worries would stay the same: Am I good enough mother? Am I loving my children the best I can? Who am I? Am I living up to my potential? When will this end? If I ran into my 17-year-old self, how could I possibly face her?

I was a little surprised that Wolitzer didn't give us more of the points of view of the two WOHM characters mentioned most often in the book, but perhaps that would have messed with the narrative arc. In contrast to, oh, almost every other book I've ever read about Manhattan mothers and the majority of popular fiction about mothers in general, Wolitzer's characters don't actually resent each other for their work-life choices. Instead, they're nuanced enough to admit that they don't feel in complete control of their own lives and working situations for the most part, but far enough removed from the crucible of the infant-toddler years not to have their deflector shields up all the time. Not to each other, necessarily, but we get to see their insecurities and victories, so we get a richer picture of each woman than most modern fiction about mothers-and-work allows.

I was right that the book is wry. Wry and laugh-out-loud funny. Wolitzer has Barbara Pym-like observation skills, and has created this world that's just like reality, only with different brand names and details. There's a scene in the coffee shop that made me gasp with horrified laughter the same way I did during the liver scene in Portnoy's Complaint*. There's sadness and loss and disappointment and resignation in this book, but also fierce love and acceptance and a burnished sort of comfort.

This is the money shot of the book:

"You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you'd given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn't know the outcome for a long time."

I really, really recommend this book, especially for women who have kids kindergarten age or above, or who are starting to look around at their friends and wonder, "Wait a minute! How did we get here, exactly?"

(When you do read the book, please go talk about it at the MotherTalk Book Club.)

Can we talk about one of the central themes of the book, that everyone's "supposed" to be passionate about something according to society, and what if you've never found that thing, or are no longer passionate about something that you once loved? My mentor (back before I realized she was going to be my mentor) told me that motherhood had galvanized her, and that she could see that it had galvanized me, too. She was absolutely right --before children I was lost and diffuse, with many things I was interested in but nothing I was passionate about. Having children changed me, and focused me. But I don't think it's the same for all of us.

What has happened to you? Are you more focused or less focused (don't answer this if your child is still waking at night!)? Have your priorities changed more than you expected? Do the things you used to love still thrill you, or have different things inserted themselves into your psyche?

* I'm not linking to Portnoy's Complaint because I despise the book and think it's a horrible reflection on the '60s that people thought such a misogynistic, anti-semitic piece of insipidness was "a humorous classic."

Product Review: Froose Juice Boxes

I was sent some boxes of Froose juice to review, and I've been wondering how to write the review ever since my kids tasted them. You see, I'm torn. I don't buy juice. My older son didn't even like it until he was over 4 years old. (Seriously. I know there are moms who brag about how their kids don't like this and that thing, but mine would ask for water instead if juice was offered. I know. He also hates mac and cheese and spaghetti. I feel somehow he's avoided the midwestern gene.) My little one will suck it down, but I don't like the sugar that's in juice, and how it fills them up so they won't eat real food. I'd rather have my kids drink water and just eat the whole fruit, instead of drinking juice.

So I'm not going to tell people to run out an buy Froose to solve all their kids dietary needs. But the thing is, my kids loved it. My older one asked for a second right after the first. And he was drinking the cherry, and usually he won't touch a berry flavor with a 10-foot pole. The little one kept trying to sneak more out of the refrigerator while I wasn't looking. (His plot failed when he'd come to me to help him with the straw. He has some work to do before he achieves super-villain status.)

You can't deny that there's nothing bad in it. And a bunch of good stuff. Whole grains and fruit juice, 3 grams of fiber, gluten-free, kosher certified.

So I'm not telling you to rush out and buy it if you don't already buy juice. But if you do buy juice, and you're looking for something with more added value, no HFCS or other crap, and your kids like cherry, pear, and peach, Froose is your drink. I'll buy it for those times I do need juice boxes (parties, trips, etc.). And I'll definitely recommend it to parents of kids who like juice boxes as a better alternative than mass-market juice boxes.

Product Review: Cranium Bloom toys

I was asked to review the new "Bloom" line of toys, made by the Cranium people (the same people who make Balloon Lagoon, possibly the most fun game for 4-year-olds ever).

I got to review the "Let's Play: Count & Cook" game and the "Seek & Find: Let's Go to the Zoo" puzzle.

The Count & Cook game is a board game with a playing board, a bunch of little discs with different foods on them, a die, and a recipe book. You put the food discs on the board in any order you want to be the path the tokens follow. Then you open the recipe book to a recipe that takes four different foods. Roll the die, and move the tokens. If you land on one in the recipe, take it off the board and put it on the recipe. The person who adds the last ingredient to the recipe wins that round.

There were a couple of things I liked about the game. One was that the kids arrange the path themselves and can switch around the order the food discs are in, so there's none of the board-memorizing and cheating that can happen in games with static paths. Also, even though there's a winner, the game was mostly cooperative and not competitive.

The game is rated for 3+, and I think the ideal age for the game would be 3-5-year-olds.My kids are 2.5 and almost 6. It was a little too simple for my older son, and a little too tough for my younger one. But still, they played happily together (with several reminders from me to "help your brother move his guy") for about 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes of that time they completely abandoned the rules and just moved their guys around the board pretending to eat the food discs, but this game seems to encourage that kind of exploration.

They asked to play the game again a few days later.

The Seek & Find puzzle is a puzzle with 24 pieces with a scene on it (we had the zoo one) and a picture of the puzzle, a dry-erase pen, and two little notebooks with elements from the puzzle picture. You put together the puzzle, then flip the notebook and take turns looking for the things in the puzzle that the notebook tells you to. When you find them on the puzzle, you circle them on the puzzle with the dry-erase marker.

They really liked this one. My older one put the puzzle together easily, and then he helped the little one find the different elements. They had fun doing the illicit drawing on a puzzle, and the picture on the puzzle was detailed and silly enough that they kept finding new elements and laughing at them. My only complaint about this game is that I got a paper cut on my knuckle while opening the box that still stings.

I think that these games are good alternatives to Candyland and Go Fish and the other beginning-level games, and are simultaneously simple enough and layered enough to draw 3-year-olds and 6-year-olds in at the same time. My 2.5-year-old was mostly fine with them with his brother's cooperation, but you couldn't have a couple of kids that young playing at the same time without many adult referees.

Book Review (fiction): The Thirteenth Tale

Book review of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

I don't read enough fiction these days. Between the kids, work, this site, knitting projects for Christmas, and 8 million other things, I pretty much only have time for non-fiction, with some memoir thrown in for fun. So I was a little hesitant when the MotherTalk people asked if I wanted to review The Thirteenth Tale. It's 400 pages, and I doubted I'd get very far in.

Well, I'm not quite to the end yet (which is good, so I don't reveal the ending inadvertently), but the book really sucked me in, almost from the beginning. It's good that I had you all contributing holiday ideas this week, because I was spending too much time reading this book. And my current knitting project is just lying there while I read.

It's written from the point of view of Margaret, a British used-book-seller and reader who has written a small biography of two long-dead brothers. One day she receives a letter from England's greatest living author of fiction, Vida Winters, whose books Margaret has never read. Winters has given false stories of her background and history to reporters throughout her career, and no one knows anything about her. But she claims that she wants to "tell the truth" and that she wants to tell it to Margaret. Winters summons Margaret to her house on the moors the next week.

So Margaret goes to the house. She and Winters have a little showdown, in which the pivotal event of the author's life, and what led her to change her name and begin writing, is revealed. Partially. We know some of the end, but not exactly, and we don't know how it all happened. So the rest of the book reels out the story.

If you've ever read and loved a Barbara Vine mystery, you will enjoy this book. Knowing the outcome of the story, but not how it transpired, allows for suspense but a more thorough, richly-layered storytelling pace. And the theme of the book is storytelling. Winters' position is that story reveals more truth than truth itself. And that's an interesting idea to consider.

Warning: One of a pair of twins has died in infancy as the background of the story (it's revealed in the first chapter of the book, so no spoiler), so beware if that's a sensitive topic for you.

Also, it's billed as a "ghost story," and I don't really get that. To me it was more of an eerie mystery, and a great book for reading while drinking cocoa or tea while it's snowing or raining outside and someone else is entertaining your kids. You won't be scared, but you will be sucked into wanting to find out what happened.

Book Review: The Daring Book For Girls

(To whoever bought  copy of The Wonder Weeks for $137, please return it! It's not worth that much money. I feel horrible because I'm sure my recommendations have contributed to this insane arbitrage of the book. I'm figuring out a workaround for the shortage of copies, and will keep you updated.)

Book review of The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz.

Remember back when we were talking about* The Dangerous Book For Boys and speculating that the book for girls wouldn't be as cool?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Daring Book for Girls is right, right, right.

This book covers so many topics, from essential gear to pressing flowers to being a spy to karate moves to negotiating a salary to Latin and Greek roots to making a lemon-powered clock to queens of the ancient world. Stocks and bonds? In the book. Peach pit rings? In the book. Building campfires? In the book. Slumber party games, rules of basketball, math tricks, making friendship bracelets, book lists, and tons more.

Don't tell my sons, but this book has more cool stuff than the boy book does.**

Honestly, the only essential thing I can think of that isn't in the book is rolling your own tampon from toilet paper in an emergency. (The target audience for the book is 8 and up, though, so tampons aren't an issue for the younger end of the audience.) Even wearing high heels is in the book, in the section on dangerous things. With a note that once you get good at it, you can even run and do karate moves in high heels.

I was lucky enough to go to the NYC reading the authors gave last week. One of the things they said was that they think it's vital to preserve so many of these "girl skills" that have been passed down from generation to generation, but have fallen out of favor because girls now are supposed to be tough. That really resonated with me. If I can be a CEO and also a knitter, then why should girls not learn how to braid friendship bracelets? By ignoring these traditional things that girls have done for fun, we're reinforcing a message that girls are only supposed to like certain things.

The other things Andi and Miriam said that was a big zing right to my solar plexus was that when they were looking around at other books for tweeners, so much of what they found was about makeup, and boys, and their bodies. So they specifically wrote a book that didn't deal with sex and makeup and bodies, but about being smart and capable and fun. They have a page about boys in the book that's remarkably sensible and human. I don't have a daughter, but this is a book I would have loved as a tween and would give to a hypothetical future daughter. I've already recommended it to at least a dozen people.

My mom called as I was writing this. I'd sent her the book after I finished it, because she's sort of the ultimate Girl Scout, and was always doing projects with me when I was a kid. Her review:

"I'm surprised at how much it looks just like one of the old Girl Scout manuals! It has that same look and feel, and encouraging tone that makes the girls feel like they want to do all the projects and learn all the facts. The disclaimer at the beginning that girls should do the projects exactly as written, and with an adult's help, was also important, because then they're spending time with an adult who can pass down the knowledge and tradition. I find the whole book fascinating, and you knew I would, [insert her embarrassing nickname for me here]."

Then she told me which ones of her friends she was going to show the book to today.

Buy the book. Did I mention that you should buy the book?

* I think it's fascinating that this discussion about gender and roles and toys and books is the most heated, vicious, and offended we've ever been on AskMoxie.org.

** In all fairness, I think that may be because the authors of the boy book are British and restrained, while the authors of the girl book are American and prone to excess. Ha. Kidding.

Book Review: Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy?

Book review of Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy by Louise Bates Ames, PhD and Frances L. Ilg, MD.

I love all the books by Ames and Ilg, researchers who worked at the Gesell Institute of Human Development and wrote the series of books in the '70s. (They've got one for each year up through age 9, and then one for ages 10-14.) This one is probably my favorite, though, because I think lots of us believe that we're mostly out of the woods by the time our kids turn three--we've survived the newborn stage, the 18-month-old stage, and the Terrible Twos, so what else could be so tough? But then 3 1/2 comes along and smacks us down, and it can be bewildering and awfully demoralizing. And it's hard not to think that it's something that we've done that's caused our kids to act like such intuitive little treasures one month and such unbearable beasts the next.

So while all the books are excellent, I'd say this is the one most of us will probably need to read just to keep our morale up for the adventure of parenting a three-year-old.

While I love this book, I also have to laugh at some of the assumptions it contains (it was written in the 70s, after all): All homes contain a married mother and father, the father works outside the home, the mother doesn't work outside the home, and they have financial and emotional resources aplenty. Um, right. But if you can put those assumptions aside and read for the wealth of information about children this age, you'll find lots to help you ease your mind.

Ames and Ilg observed that for kids this age, things seemed to run on a 6-month cycle of equilibrium and disequilibrium. So for awhile children would be fluent and cheerful, coordinated, learning new things all the time, and happy little kids doing things smoothly. Then they'd go through a period of being physically clumsy, stuttering, being in foul moods, and just having things go wrong a lot of the time. According to them, this is normal, so knowing that will help you wait out the periods of disequilibrium, and not get freaked out by things that are developmentally appropriate but seem like regressions (like stuttering).

The book talks about socialization with other children, emotional leaps, routines, "how the child sees the world," and all kinds of other interesting topics. When I read this book for the first time, my older son was in the disequilibrium phase of being three, and I was so relieved to read that some of the things I thought were peculiar to him (like suddenly not wanting to go outside to play) were actually common. It was nice to be able to read about little details of the day, like getting dressed.

The suggestions for how to deal with some of the problems are hilarious, partly because they're a little anachronistic, but also because they're just unflinching and deadpan. My favorite quote from the book comes from the section talking about how a three-year-old can be completely adversarial with the mother, because the mother is the one the child is most emotionally engaged with:

"Recognizing this fact, you will if at all possible enlist the services of a good baby-sitter for as much of the time as possible...This advice may seem like the all-time cop-out. It remains our best advice."

How could I not love this book? Instead of telling you you're doing everything the wrong way, it just flat out says that you can't change the child's reactions at a given stage, so instead just try to work around them. Or pay someone else to deal with your child for the six months of disequilibrium. (I guess my idea of Toddler Boarding School isn't that original.) It makes me laugh, but also really made me feel better about things when I was in the thick of that stage.

This book isn't going to be any kind of panacea for the problems you're having with your three-year-old. But it will give you benchmarks to see that your kid is actually normal, and that is such an enormous help, one that's actually better than giving specific techniques (which may or may not work on your particular kid anyway).

I don't tell people they need to buy books all that often, but this one I think is really handy to own, so you can read it through every few weeks to get a reality check. It's not expensive at $12 new, but it looks like there are tons of used copies available cheaply, so you could pretty much rent it for a year by buying it and then reselling it once your child turns four.

I know others of you out there have read this book. What did you think? Could you get past the anachronisms, or did they distract you too much?