Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of one of the biggest blogs around, BoingBoing.net. In fact, I’ve been reading that blog for a couple of years now. Who knew, that I would get a chance to review Mark’s new book, Made By Hand. I initially thought the book was about making fun items at home, and [...]

After reading only the title of Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s new book, The Bucolic Plague: From Drag Queen to Goat Farmer, I knew I had to read it. While the only thing I know about goat farming I learned on a tour of the Surfing Goat Dairy (www.surfinggoatdairy.com) on Maui, I was intrigued. How does one go [...]

When I first laid eyes on Judith Walzer Leavitt’s book Make Room for Daddy, I had an immediate rapport with the dust jacket from two divergent perspectives.  A rapport with a dust jacket?  Yes, I know, it sounds silly.  Yet, there before me was part of a Norman Rockwell painting showing a maternity ward waiting [...]

After watching a group of pre-schoolers play soccer at our local park, my two-year-old twins and I were eager to read Big Kicks, written and illustrated by Bob Kolar. This fun picture book, recently released by Candlewick Press in paperback, has wonderful digital artwork. With bright colors and cute animals, each page has so much [...]

With Father’s day around the corner, I had the opportunity to review these three titles from Chronicle Books for the upcoming holiday: Handy Dad by Todd Davis, Dear Dad ed. by Geoff Blackwell and Memento by Michael McQueen. Each title is a different take on how to present peculiarities of fatherhood in an entertaining and [...]

Nothing promotes the value of idle parenting like a slipped disk and strict instructions from my doctor to absolutely not pick up my twins, who were about to turn two, for two weeks. While do I try to limit my “helicopter parenting” to an amount appropriate for my kids age, I am not idle by [...]

Be prepared, just not in a bad way. That’s my advice to any reader picking up Marks of Cain by Tom Knox. In his book, Knox’s three main characters are terrorized and chased throughout Europe and Africa by a secret society trying to keep them from learning the truth. He splits the adventure into two [...]

New York Times bestselling author, Tom Rob Smith, returns to a time of great change in the Soviet Union’s history in his second book The Secret Speech. Following the success of his debut novel Child 44, this book is set against a fascinating historical backdrop. A fast-paced page-turner, The Secret Speech completely immerses the reader [...]

Joshua Ferris is a gifted author. His ability to enrapture my attention for the entirety of the novel is mark enough of that talent, but to also have me think about life, love, and the existence of the soul while in the midst of a conversation about Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a glimpse into [...]

Helping others is a trait I believe is written in our DNA and is also something that is learned from our environment. That is why we need to be able to teach it to our children and cannot assume that they will just do it naturally. One of the methods often employed is the use [...]