The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A quick read.  Dark, creepy atmosphere and topics that address some of kids' deepest fears.  BUT, at the end, I am still thinking that this was overall Stephen King's It -lite.  :/  That being said, it wasn't bad, though I never really got into it.  I think in it's place, I'd recommend Neil Gaiman's Coraline as similar & much better (doesn't seem like so much of a knock-off).  Also, it's for older readers (9? 10?).


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Uh Oh Baby!

Uh-Oh, Baby! by Nancy Coffelt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book reminds me of our youngest son. It's very cute and well-illustrated. I think it's intended for toddlers and preschoolers and I think they can relate to another kid who's doing his best to do something (in Rudy's case making his mom a present) and then something goes wrong. They want to impress, for their mom to say "Wow!" instead of the constant "Uh oh!" when what they're trying to do is a little beyond them (in my toddler's case he wants to unload the dishwasher on his own - by standing on the open dishwasher door and then removing the dishes and intermingling them with whatever else might be on the counter - a serious uh-oh, but he's trying to help... he wants "Wow!").

While the ladybug isn't acknowledged in the text, it's obvious in the pictures and when storytelling to preschool-age kids, asking them what's happening in the picture "What happened here? Why did Rudy's picture blow away?" etc.... is pretty common. And kids are used to the visual - for them, the text *is* part of the picture, so the limited amount of text with a lot going on in the pictures is helpful for them because they don't have to rely on the text (which they can't read yet) to describe the action. Good Dog Carl is another book that has very limited text, but the story is told through the pictures.

Very highly recommended for parents of preschoolers and for story times.

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Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud)

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Again, I find some ideas that were probably ahead of his time (just a handful), others that just demonstrate the scientific state of the study of human & child development - both physically and psychologically - of Freud's time that make me wonder how his theories would change if he were writing today, and then there's others that I suspect stem from the culture of the time/place he's writing in that make me roll my eyes. Reading with the cultural bias of my physical and cultural background, methinks he & the whole Western culture of the time (late 19th to early 20th century) were waaaay too obsessed with masturbation & its supposed ill-effects on one's psychological well-being.

Recommended for those interested in psychology or gender studies, otherwise, I'd probably go with a more general book about Freud and his ideas.

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Bunny Drop

Bunny Drop 1 by Yumi Unita

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am enjoying this since it takes on a lot of grown-up issues: do parents "sacrifice" themselves to raise kids? should they? what makes a family? how should adults explain things to children like death? Probably because I have a lot of similar thoughts floating around in my mind, I find it a little comforting to have a comic story with a lot of the same issues. I don't like a lot of the novels with these topics because they're too melodramatic or the characters are too self-centered to be enjoyable.

Recommended to parents who enjoy comics/manga.



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