An absorbing and frank book that chronicles the author’s triumph over health and personal crises.
A debut memoir details the struggles of a wife with ulcerative colitis and infertility.
When Mills H. and her husband, Rob, adopted their Yorkshire terrier puppy, they named him Riley, to fit with the breeder’s preference and to allude to the expression “life of Riley.” The fact Riley also meant “brave” was a happy coincidence. Just a year earlier, the couple had lost their son, Chad, who was stillborn after his mother’s struggle with ulcerative colitis during pregnancy. Determined to have another child—the daughter both the author and her mother-in-law had strong premonitions Mills H. was destined to deliver—the couple tried intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization. Eventually, when Mills H.’s half sister, Michelle, volunteered to be a surrogate carrier, the author leapt at the chance. Finally, she achieved her lifelong dream of motherhood when her daughter, Skylar, was born. Chad’s name means “Warrior” while Skylar means “Protector”—hence, the work’s title. While the memoir primarily focuses on the author’s infertility, her ailments—which contributed significantly to her child-bearing issues—also figure prominently. Additional autobiographical information provides relevant content for her story. All her life, Mills H. looked forward to becoming a homemaker and mother, and she highlights the women in her life who were fortunate enough to have that role. After a false start with a first husband she had to support, the author met and married Rob, a private pilot to celebrities. Of the few secondary characters in the book, Rob remains the most shadowy and one-dimensional, little more than the often traveling spouse. Mills H.’s mother and mother-in-law, and later her half sister, provide the emotional support and care she needs during her trials and are more developed characters. The compelling account does not break new ground in the realm of fertility challenges, but Mills H. is a deeply sympathetic character, although not all readers will identify with her aspiration to be a homemaker. Further, her brushes with celebrity (Thanksgiving and a trip to Greece with Kevin Costner) and her luxurious, golf club community home make her less relatable. Despite her seemingly lavish lifestyle, her medical and fertility problems emphasize her vulnerability.
An absorbing and frank book that chronicles the author’s triumph over health and personal crises.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5353-8112-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.
Savvy counsel and starter lists for fretting parents.
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, 2017, etc.) and Russo, the children’s book editor for that publication, provide standard-issue but deftly noninvasive strategies for making books and reading integral elements in children’s lives. Some of it is easier said than done, but all is intended to promote “the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading” for pleasure. Mediumwise, print reigns supreme, with mild approval for audio and video books but discouraging words about reading apps and the hazards of children becoming “slaves to the screen.” In a series of chapters keyed to stages of childhood, infancy to the teen years, the authors supplement their advice with short lists of developmentally appropriate titles—by their lights, anyway: Ellen Raskin’s Westing Game on a list for teens?—all kitted out with enticing annotations. The authors enlarge their offerings with thematic lists, from “Books That Made Us Laugh” to “Historical Fiction.” In each set, the authors go for a mix of recent and perennially popular favorites, leaving off mention of publication dates so that hoary classics like Janice May Udry’s A Tree Is Nice seem as fresh as David Wiesner’s Flotsam and Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak? and sidestepping controversial titles and themes in the sections for younger and middle-grade readers—with a few exceptions, such as a cautionary note that some grown-ups see “relentless overparenting” in Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series doesn’t make the cut except for a passing reference to its “troubling treatment of Indians.” The teen lists tend to be edgier, salted with the provocative likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a nod to current demands for more LGBTQ and other #ownvoices books casts at least a glance beyond the mainstream. Yaccarino leads a quartet of illustrators who supplement the occasional book cover thumbnails with vignettes and larger views of children happily absorbed in reading.
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0530-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of...
A 70-something reflects on becoming the father of his sixth child at age 59.
Meyer fathered three sons during the Vietnam War era while married to his first wife. A journalism professor at California State University-Long Beach, he entered a second marriage to a student 27 years his junior, fathering two daughters and a son. After much agonizing about balancing career and family, Meyer took early retirement from his teaching to become a parent and a home-based freelance writer. Before his retirement, the first batch of his diary-like entries became a book, 1989's My Summer With Molly: The Journal of a Second Generation Father. After retirement, he became a regular journal-writer, musing about parenting and dozens of related threads. Just as Molly dominated the first collection of entries, son Franz dominates the second collection. At turns doctrinaire, old fuddy-duddy, self-deprecating, melancholy, humorous, even hip, Meyer is a thoughtful guide through daily life. The seemingly oblique title becomes clear in the context of the W.B. Yeats' quotation from which it is derived: "An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress..." Meyer sounds ageist at times, but throughout, he is determined to fight his own aging and to serve as a good husband and father. Eschewing sentimentality much of the time, Meyer can't help occasionally lapsing into teary-eyed territory. He concludes that "geezer fatherdom" is worth the costs, that "in the end, there is only love, active and remembered, to warm the chill of a cooling universe."
Despite Meyer's unusual perspective, this journal contains memorable passages of joy and sorrow for parents and children of all ages.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-942273-05-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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