67 results for "Children"

Inheriting Anne Frank

Maarsen, Jacqueline van
Jacqueline van Maarsen's first book My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank ends in 1947, two years after the death of her close friend Anne Frank. But Anne's death did not spell the end of the friendship. Otto Frank clung desperately to his deceased daughter's dearest friend. Having remained silent about her friendship with Anne Frank for decades after the war, Jacqueline van Maarsen finally decided to tell her story, hoping to expose half-truths and fabrications surrounding her former friend and to respect Anne Frank's legacy for what it is. While her books have been written in close cooperation with the Anne Frank Foundation, there are times when she has felt obliged to disagree with the Foundation and she has not shied away from confrontation. In her second book, van Maarsen returns in detail to the most dominant person in her life, her French mother who died in 1992 at the age of 101. The aftermath of an inheritance question in France in which the author had an important role to play, takes on tragic proportions, although the hilarity of the sometimes grotesque situation surfaces now and then. Inheriting Anne Frank is the continuation of Jacqueline van Maarsen's My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank, and is an important documentary contribution to our knowledge of Anne Frank and what happened to and on account of her renowned diary. It is also a stirring portrait of a woman's turbulent life in the twentieth century
Arcadia Books 2009 158 pages

Shanda: a memoir of shame and secrecy

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin
"In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family. Beginning with her own long-suppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives--revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and supposedly embarrassing illnesses. While unmasking their charades and disguises, Pogrebin also showcases her family's remarkable talent for reinvention in a narrative that is, by turns, touching, searing, and surprisingly universal." --
Post Hill Press 2022 429 pages

Growing Up Is Hard

Laura Schlessinger
Dear Parents, All parents understand the feeling of being willing to take on the pain of their child's stomachache, sprained ankle, or broken arm to relive their child of hurt. Most parents, though, would rather that their child have a broken bone than a broken heart. Seeing our chilren agonize over emotional pain brings up feelings of helplessness and desperation. As parents, we want to make it all better and save our children from the sometimes harsh realities of life. But if they are to learn how to cope effectively with the personal challenges in their own lives, our children need to acknowledge and understand their own feelings rather than act out on them inappropriately or stuff them away. That's why it's so important for parents to observe and gently inquire when their children are in emotional distress - usually evidenced by withdrawn or angry behaviors. It is vital for parents to be able to talk about these things and to teach their children how to communicate what they are feeling. Growing Up is Hard will help you help your child become stronger and more confident by exploring and facing disappointments, hurts, frustrations, and embarrassment. Shalom, Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Harper Collins 2003-04-15 40 pages

My Bonnie: how dementia stole the love of my life

Suchet, John
Earlier this year John Suchet revealed that his beautiful 67-year-old wife Bonnie, the love of his life, is suffering from Dementia. During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer, and he has found his new job exceptionally tough. In this moving and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair. For John, it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a decade after they first met, their passionate and romantic love affair began. They married in 1985, head over heels in love, and have enjoyed more than 20 years of love and laughter. Both had been married before (she had two children and he had three) but both felt, the day they married, they finally joined their other half. In March 2004, John began to notice strange quirks in Bonnie's behavior. She underwent her first set of neurological tests in March 2005, which brought back no definite results. Then, in February 2006, following a second set of tests, she was diagnosed with Dementia. For three years John personally cared for his beloved wife, keeping her condition secret from all but family and close friends. But in the middle of September this year, more than 26 years after his life with Bonnie began, John made the agonizing decision to move his wife to a full-time care home. Written in passionate and vivid prose that captures both the warmth of the good times and the utter despair of the bad times, John weaves together a series of moving and heartfelt stories.
HarperCollins 2010 311 pages

Little Frog and the Spring Polliwogs

Jane Yolen
The feisty young heroine of Little Frog and the Scary Autumn Thing is back with a new adventure--being a big sister! Little Frog is no longer the littlest frog. Some new family members--the spring polliwogs--are so much trouble for the former "Only Frog," and Little Frog is all out of sorts. But when that polliwog trouble becomes nothing compared to a real threat---boys with nets!--Little Frog has to remember all that she's been taught in order to save the tadpoles from disaster. This charmer of a sequel is by multi-award winning author Jane Yolen, author of On Bird Hill, Owl Moon and the How Do Dinosaurs...? books. The wonderful spring palette and adorable pictures are by illustrator of the first Little Frog, Ellen Shi. About the LITTLE FROG Series Fear comes in many shapes and sizes. Seasons change. Families change. And change can be a scary thing for a little mind exploring the complicated emotions of facing the unknown. With gentle sweetness, Little Frog makes them laugh and breathe a sigh of relief through life's natural cycles. Little Frog shows young children they can muster up courage in the face of all things strange and new. With a little love, patience, and acceptance, big fears can be turned into bigger discoveries. Praise for LITTLE FROG "Vivid autumn foliage is generally considered to be a thing of beauty, but those unfamiliar colors spell danger to a young frog. Yolen doesn't rush Little Frog's emotional turnaround. Shi's inviting mixed-media landscapes make it clear that the amphibian is never in danger...reasoned reactions to her own nervousness hint at ways readers might tackle their own fears." -- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY "This book is great for new/older siblings. It is cute and relatable." -- GOODREADS
Wundermill Publishing Group, Incorporated 2019-03-27 32 pages

Unearthed: a lost actress, a forbidden book, and a search for life in the shadow of the Holocaust

Frank, Meryl
"As child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the city, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl's cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna's Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic family and community to play roles as prostitutes and bellhops, lovers and nuns. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died. Before Mollie passed away, she gave Meryl a Yiddish book containing the terrible answer, but forbade her to read it. And for years, Meryl obeyed. Unearthed is the story of Meryl's search for Franya and a timely history of hatred and resistance. Through archives across four continents, by way of chance encounters and miraculous discoveries, and eventually, guided by the shocking truth recorded in the pages of the forbidden book, Meryl conjures the rogue spirit of her cousin-her beauty and her tragedy. Meryl's search reveals a lost world destroyed by hatred, illuminating the cultural haven of Vilna and its resistance during World War II. As she seeks to find her lost family legacy, Meryl looks for answers to the questions that have defined her life: what is our duty to the past? How do we honor such memories while keeping them from consuming us? And what do we teach our children about tragedy?"--
Hachette Books 2023 242 pages

A cracking of the heart

Horowitz, David
After losing a loved one, "pay attention to the ways in which your relationship continues." So advised Sarah Horowitz in an interview she gave the day before her unexpected death. In A Cracking of the Heart, David Horowitz explores the legacy of his extraordinary daughter's short life, and narrates his quest for a deeper understanding of the child he lost. A remarkable woman and gifted writer, Sarah was afflicted with a birth condition that, while complicating and ultimately shortening her life, never affected her dreams. From an early age, she displayed inspiring courage in facing her own difficulties and boundless compassion for the underserved and overlooked in many communities, from an autistic niece in her own family to uneducated children in Africa. A Cracking of the Heart chronicles the separation of father and daughter through political and familial conflicts, and their slow reunion. Alternately searing and uplifting, it reconciles what could have been with what is, taking the reader through a father's love, frustration, admiration, and grief, to what lies beyond.
Regnery Pub 2009-10-26 188 pages

Animalcolm

Baddiel, David
From David Baddiel, the brightest new star of children's books and winner of the LOLLIES award, comes a laugh-out-loud adventure for every child who ever wondered what it might be like to be a bit of an animal... Malcolm doesn't like animals. Which is a problem because his family love them. Their house is full of pets. What the house is NOT full of is stuff Malcolm likes. Such as the laptop he wanted for his birthday. The only bright spot on the horizon is the Year Six school trip, which Malcolm never thought his parents would pay for. And yet there he is, on the bus, heading to... oh no. A farm. Over the next days, Malcolm changes. He learns a lot about animals. More, in many ways, than he would like. He learns what it's really like to be an animal. A whole series of animals, in fact... It does make him think differently. And speak differently. And eat differently. And, um, smell differently. But will he end up the same as before? Because sometimes the hardest thing to become is... yourself.
HarperCollins Children's Books 2016 368 pages

Ties that stress : the new family imbalance

Elkind, David
What has happened to the American family in the last few decades? And what are these changes doing to our children? A renowned child psychologist and author of several influential works on child development, David Elkind has devoted his career to these urgent questions. This eloquent book - the culmination of his inquiry - puts together all the pieces, puzzling facts, and conflicting accounts, and shows us as never before what the American family has become. Today's postmodern family is under enormous stress. And as a result, the needs of hurried children have been sacrificed to the needs of their harried parents. Childhood innocence has been supplanted by the illusion of childhood competence; teenage immaturity has given way to pseudo-sophistication; and parental intuition has been traded in for a mechanical reliance on technique. These changes and a host of others have undermined the well-being of children and adolescents. From Freud to Friedan to Foucault, Elkind traces the roots of the postmodern family back to the failure of the modern nuclear family and its supporting institutions - the media, the so-called helping professions, the legal system, and the schools - to meet the needs of parents. The new postmodern family is more flexible, more permeable, more urbane, but also out of balance because it fails to meet the needs of children. Treated like miniature adults, today's children and adolescents go without the protection and security they need, while their once-sheltered baby-boomer parents, facing new economic pressures for which they are unprepared, secretly wonder why they've never really felt like grown-ups. But all is not bleak. Elkind finds evidence of an emerging vital family that melds the best of the modern and postmodern, one in which the needs of all family members are held in a dynamic, if delicate, balance. Many books have decried the decline in family values, the negative impact of divorce, the increase in single-mother families, and impoverished prospects for our children. But none has pulled all these fragments together as Elkind's does and put them into a solid framework, one that finally makes sense of the way we were, and what we as families may become.
Harvard University Press 1995 260 pages

The bill from my father

Cooper, Bernard
Edward Cooper was a hard man to know. Dour and exuberant by turns, his moods dictated the always-uncertain climate of the Cooper household. Now - balding, octogenarian - he makes an unlikely literary muse. But to his now middle-aged son, he looms larger than life, an overwhelming, baffling presence. Edward Cooper made his name as a divorce attorney in LA whose cases were devoured by the tabloids. Now, he is slowly succumbing to dementia. As Bernard attempts to forge a coherent picture of his family history, he uncovers Edward's lawsuits against other family members, and recalls the itemized invoice his father once sent him for the total cost of his upbringing, for the sum of two million dollars. 'Bernard Cooper's The Bill from My Fathe r is a glorious cornucopia of love and pain. Not only is Cooper an exemplary writer but he can parse an emotion down to its most resonant note. This memoir amazes' Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones 'Cooper is a beautiful writer . . . his book is in a class of its own . . . Somehow, this is a story about all parents and their grown-up children and how they manage to keep going through all the insults and mixed messages and botched attempts to express love' Observer 'Cooper's wry, rueful memoir of a lifetime's wrangling with the old guy is memorably moving, emotionally disciplined, devilish in the detail and smartly funny. Read it now' The Times
Picador 2014-01-16 258 pages

Strange Relations

Sonia Levitin
A summer in paradise. That's all Marne wants. That's all she can think of when she asks her parents permission to spend the summer in Hawaii with Aunt Carole and her family. But Marne quickly realizes her visit isn't going to be just about learning to surf and morning runs along the beach, despite the cute surfer boy she keeps bumping into. For one thing, Aunt Carole isn't even Aunt Carole anymore—she's Aunt Chaya, married to a Chasidic rabbi and deeply rooted in her religious community. Nothing could be more foreign to Marne, and fitting into this new culture—and house full of kids—is a challenge. But as she settles into her newfound family's daily routine, she begins to think about spirituality, identity, and finding a place in the world in a way she never has before. This rich novel is a window into a different life and gets to the very heart of faith, identity, and family ties. From the Hardcover edition.
Random House Children's Books 2009-04-14 298 pages

Double Or Nothing

Dennis Foon
Raise the stakes and feel the heat. Kip is addicted to the pure adrenaline rush that hits when the stakes are high and the bets are laid down. His gambling addiction uses up his money, his mother's money -- and then their real trouble begins. Dennis Foon's believable portrait of a teen caught in a gambling addiction crackles with suspense and a foreboding sense of where Kip will land. Originally published in 2000, this remarkable novel has been updated to reflect new technology and the rise of online gambling. Praise for the previous edition of Double or Nothing : New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age "Our Choice" List, Canadian Children's Book Centre South Carolina Young Adult Book Award finalist "This edgy novel believably captures the nightmare of compulsive gambling." -- Horn Book "Compelling characters . . . a fast-moving plot with plenty of crisp, authentic dialog." -- Booklist
Annick Press 2011 212 pages

If only

Gilmore, Jennifer
At sixteen Bridget is pregnant--and her boyfriend has dumped her for another girl. She's trying to envision a future for her baby. But as she sifts through the many paths and the many people who want to parent her child, she can't help but feel that there is no right decision. Fifteen years later: Ivy knows that she is now the same age Bridget was when she placed Ivy for adoption. She knows that Bridget was the one who named her. When Ivy goes in search of Bridget--of her own history--will the risks outweigh the benefits of knowing where she comes from and why her birth mother chose to walk away?
HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2018-07-31 275 pages