An elegant and useful guide to parenting, from a unique perspective.
The first English translation of Kuramoto’s treatise on the manipulative ways of the baby.
Written by “a legendary samurai baby from seventeenth century Japan” as a self-help guide for tots, the way of the baby has Zen’s clarity and obliquity. Kuramoto, with the aid of Suzuki’s minimalist sketches, examines all aspects of a baby’s communication skills. Parents should pay close attention to this wise baby’s advice. Like Noam Chomsky’s concept of hard-wired grammar, babies have an intuitive grasp of communication using gestures, looks and vocalizations. First: “The Way of the baby is through mastering the parent.” Stick to your resolve, says Kuramoto; don’t give your hand away to the parent, for many interesting revelations emerge when the parent’s guard is lowered: “Know the secret of the grin and the power of the gaze. Anticipate the plans of the parent without looking and before they occur.” Use facial expressions to grab attention: Narrow your eyes and let out a soft grunt or a measured yelp if a parent seems distracted or disinterested. Laughter, too, is always a key to the heart.
An elegant and useful guide to parenting, from a unique perspective.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2005
ISBN: 0-595-35885-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Grandmotherly wisdom, with practical advice for parents concerned about the way their children are growing up.
From the author of Noah’s Garden (1993), which advocated conversion of suburban lawns into more natural and ecologically sound gardens, comes an expanded thesis: We must “wild the land” not just for the benefit of other creatures but for the sake of our own species.
Stein argues that there is a mismatch between the biology of development and the environment that enables it. The derangement of our human habitat “isolates and estranges us,” she says, and as parents our task is to discover how to foster our children’s social engagement with the natural environment. To develop her argument she follows a roughly developmental order, from birth to adolescence, using experiences with and observations of her grandchildren and other youngsters she has known, plus memories of her own childhood. Buttressing her personal experiences are her gleanings from readings in natural history, paleoanthropology, linguistics, and psychology. She stresses the importance of self-discovery for children and urges creation of a natural environment outdoors that is for them as engaging and social as the kitchen is indoors. For parents squeamish about introducing their children to spiders, snakes, or other less appealing denizens of the outdoor world, she suggests starting with a bed of flowers. There are even recipes for a rose-petal jelly and a wild leek soup to be made from ingredients gathered outside. Stein emphasizes the value of giving children hands-on experiences, of introducing them to adult tools and teaching them manual skills. Children, she says, do not want to be (and should not be kept) unable to produce, earn, or in some other way be useful to their families, and parents who keep their children useless do them a disservice.
Grandmotherly wisdom, with practical advice for parents concerned about the way their children are growing up.Pub Date: June 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-86547-584-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
At once poetic and crude, this is a raw story that provides horror and laughter in equal measure.
A collection of darkly comic thumbnail sketches that portray an abusive household from the perspective of a child whose intelligence (and maturity) surpass those of her parents.
It’s hard to believe that St. John is now a New York City art-gallery owner, in light of her impoverished (in every sense) childhood in southern Illinois. She and her three siblings “were white trash hicks with a real weird accent.” They were browbeaten and battered by their father, a hotheaded alcoholic of Irish and Native American descent who squandered his wages at the Rat Hole bar while his starving children dreamt of owning shoes. Her housebound mother, a “half wit” Hungarian war bride, was just as bad, hoarding doughnuts at P.T.A meetings and smacking her children (who she nicknamed “mud ball,” “hog,” and “Blumpsen, which means fat sausage in German”). St. John narrates her early life in an unrefined native dialect, describing outhouse adventures with an irate rooster, her hillbilly grandmother’s first visit to a grocery store, and the “boots” they made of plastic bags for her younger sibling. There are hilarious episodes illustrating her mother’s inability to assimilate into American culture and her father’s backwoods ways, but sometimes the black humor is outweighed by horror—especially when she describes the injuries her female relatives received at the hands of violent or drunken husbands. Throughout her chaotic narration, the tragedy of four pathetic children futilely waiting to receive their parents’ affections emerges. St. John blatantly acknowledges her yearning for her father’s recognition, but her feelings for her mother remain ambiguous. And it is uncertain, in the end, whether she really transcended her rustic origins at all: despite a college education and her later highbrow career, the author’s description of her own drinking habits, unplanned pregnancy, and abusive lover suggest that, in some regards, she followed in her parents’ footsteps.
At once poetic and crude, this is a raw story that provides horror and laughter in equal measure.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-018631-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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