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THE ESSENTIAL PARTNERSHIP: How Parents and Childre

In First Feelings (1985), pediatrician Greenspan described the stages of a child's emotional development. Here, we get practical advice on building "the essential partnership" between parent and child that fosters that development. Parents are shown how to take specific steps to encourage a child's emotional growth just as they do his or her intellectual growth. The Greenspans suggest that parents create regular, unstructured "floor time" with their children. The goal of these specially setaside times is real engagement—children learning to interact pleasurably with another person, to "connect" on an emotional level, and eventually to speak and to reason about their feelings. The authors discuss mood and self-esteem, sexuality and excitement, anger, separation anxiety, fear, and competitiveness—and use numerous vignettes and sample dialogues to show how their method works with children between infancy and five or six years of age. A refreshing, much-needed guidebook—with clear, friendly explanations designed specifically to the intelligent steering of a process that's too often left largely to chance.

Pub Date: March 29, 1989

ISBN: 670-81279-X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

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THE ISLAND

Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...

Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.

The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.

Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.

Pub Date: July 6, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010

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CATCH-22

Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.

Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.

Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.

Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961

ISBN: 0684833395

Page Count: 468

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961

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