by Eileen Kennedy-Moore Mark S. Lowenthal ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2011
This forgiving, intelligent look at raising smart children will help parents teach their kids that there’s more to life than...
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Two psychologists offer a perceptive guide to help smart children succeed academically and socially.
Kennedy-Moore (The Unwritten Rules of Friendship, 2003, etc.) and Lowenthal evaluate the roadblocks that frequently arise for smart children between the ages of 6 and 12. The authors identify “seven fundamental challenges” faced by smart children—and, of course, their parents. They use those challenges to look at how parents can help intelligent children succeed not just in school, but in life, too. Each chapter is devoted to analyzing a challenge: tempering perfectionism, building connection, managing sensitivity, handling cooperation and competition, dealing with authority, developing motivation and finding joy. The authors discuss why each is important for children’s development, aided by vignettes drawn from exhaustive research and their psychology practices. The result is a treasure trove of strategies parents can use to help their children interact with peers, teachers and family members. They also address how children can combat their insecurities in a way that will generate “inner strength and outward compassion.” The authors suggest conversations parents can have with their kids, activities they can engage in together, and songs parents can sing to help lead their children to new intellectual and emotional growth. Near the end of each chapter are suggestions for how parents can model healthy behaviors for their kids; the well-structured chapters then close with a short summary. The authors are also attuned to the nuances that can affect children’s relationships, even noting how the “increase in technology-related play” has altered children’s social lives. Charts and graphs help make the authors’ approach truly “solution-focused,” and the vignettes will be achingly familiar for most parents. Although the book targets the parents of bright children, the lessons herein will be relevant to any parent.
This forgiving, intelligent look at raising smart children will help parents teach their kids that there’s more to life than academic achievement.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0470640050
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jossey-Bass/Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jacqueline Winspear ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2020
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.
The bestselling author recalls her childhood and her family’s wartime experiences.
Readers of Winspear’s popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series appreciate the London investigator’s canny resourcefulness and underlying humanity as she solves her many cases. Yet Dobbs had to overcome plenty of hardships in her ascent from her working-class roots. Part of the appeal of Winspear’s Dobbs series are the descriptions of London and the English countryside, featuring vividly drawn particulars that feel like they were written with firsthand knowledge of that era. In her first book of nonfiction, the author sheds light on the inspiration for Dobbs and her stories as she reflects on her upbringing during the 1950s and ’60s. She focuses much attention on her parents’ lives and their struggles supporting a family, as they chose to live far removed from their London pasts. “My parents left the bombsites and memories of wartime London for an openness they found in the country and on the land,” writes Winspear. As she recounts, each of her parents often had to work multiple jobs, which inspired the author’s own initiative, a trait she would apply to the Dobbs character. Her parents recalled grueling wartime experiences as well as stories of the severe battlefield injuries that left her grandfather shell-shocked. “My mother’s history,” she writes, “became my history—probably because I was young when she began telling me….Looking back, her stories—of war, of abuse at the hands of the people to whom she and her sisters had been billeted when evacuated from London, of seeing the dead following a bombing—were probably too graphic for a child. But I liked listening to them.” Winspear also draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system.
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-269-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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PERSPECTIVES
by Nick Cave & Seán O'Hagan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 2022
A somber, sage book about art-making that deserves a readership beyond Cave’s fan base.
The Australian alt-rock icon talks at length about the relationship between faith, death, and art.
Like many touring musicians stalled during the pandemic, Cave pursued an autobiographical book project while in quarantine. But rather than write a standard memoir, he instead consented to a book of extensive interviews with U.K. arts journalist O’Hagan, photography critic for the Guardian and a feature writer for the Observer. Cave chose this approach in order to avoid standard rock-star patter and to address grittier, more essential matters. On that front, he has plenty of material to work with. Much of the book focuses on his 15-year-old son Arthur, who died from an accidental fall off a cliff in 2015. The loss fueled Cave’s 2019 album, Ghosteen, but Cave sees the connection between life and art as indirect, involving improvisation, uncertainty, and no small amount of thinking about religion. “The loss of my son is a condition; not a theme,” he tells O’Hagan. Loss is a constant in these conversations—during the period when they were recorded, Cave’s mother also died, as did his former band mate Anita Lane. Yet despite that, this is a lively, engrossing book energized by Cave’s relentless candor—and sometimes counterintuitive thinking—about his work and his demons. His well-documented past heroin addiction, he says, “fed into my need for a conservative and well-ordered life.” Grief, he suggests, is surprisingly clarifying: “We become different. We become better.” Throughout, he talks about the challenges and joys of songwriting and improvisation (mostly around Carnage, the 2021 album he recorded with band mate Warren Ellis during this period) and about the comfort he gets answering questions from fans and strangers on his website. O’Hagan knows Cave’s work well, but he avoids fussy discographical queries and instead pushes Cave toward philosophical elaborations, which he’s generally game for.
A somber, sage book about art-making that deserves a readership beyond Cave’s fan base.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60737-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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