HAVING YOUR SECOND CHILD FIRST

Name: HAVING YOUR SECOND CHILD FIRST
Author: Ina Sinsheimer
ISBN: 978-1-5255-0599-7

by Ina Sinsheimer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 23, 2018

A preschool director draws on decades of experience in this debut parenting guide.

Sinsheimer, who founded the First Step Nursery School in 1977, has witnessed countless scenarios of parents and teachers interacting with children. This book compiles many in an anecdotal manner, interspersing them with the author’s expert commentary. The children range in age from newborn to adolescent, though most are preschoolers. They can be shy or rambunctious, insecure or rebellious, bullies or bullied. In one example, a teacher helped a creative but short-tempered 4-year-old boy realize the consequences of his angry outbursts, and arranged for him and two other boys to practice playing nicely together. The child eventually learned to “express his feelings in an appropriate way, to listen to the ideas of others, and that it was all right to create his world and share it with others.” Sinsheimer covers an impressive number of child development topics, including the struggle for independence, sibling rivalry, and gender identity. She advises readers on appropriate discipline, developing children’s talents, coping with learning disorders, and even how to handle holidays. The book also addresses such weighty topics as divorce, abuse, and the concept of death. The author’s overall strategy is simple but brilliant: Let the stories make the points. Many other writers dispense parenting advice by talking at readers, but Sinsheimer seems to converse with them while offering realistic scenes that teach clear, vital principles. The stories are entertaining as well as instructive, and many parents will relate to specific characters and situations. Sinsheimer encourages and empowers readers to be “experts in their child’s life,” and she boldly prods them to action. The chapters are neatly organized, but the addition of section headings within them might have made it easier to scan the material.

A powerful tool for parents and educators.

Pub Date: March 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5255-0599-7

Page Count: 280

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION

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Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)