66 results for "Children"

How not to kill your baby

Sager Weinstein, Jacob
From writing a birth announcement that won’t attract the attention of kidnappers, to doing criminal background checks on the other parents before having a playdate, How Not to Kill Your Baby is the perfect comedic antidote to parental paranoia. "This laugh-out-loud hilarious book is mandatory reading for parents, and should be taught in schools as the "cautionary tale" portion of Sex Ed. Run don't walk to buy it, and if you're a baby with lethal parents, crawl don't roll." --Rob Kutner (writer, The Daily Show, Conan, The Future According To Me ) "Unlike babies themselves, copies of Jacob Sager Weinstein's book can be bought and sold on the open market. Buy two and bring joy and laughter to the lives of a copy-less couple." --Jose Arroyo (writer, Conan ) "The "s-a-g-e" in Jacob's middle moniker indicates exactly that. He is a whimsically wise and hysterically funny fellow whom any child (or book buying adult) would be wise to listen to." --Dennis Miller "If you don't buy this book and then your baby dies, how are you going to feel? Pretty bad, I imagine." --Larry Doyle (writer, I Love You Beth Cooper; Go, Mutants!; The Simpsons ) Have you ever read a parenting book that left you feeling inadequate and/or terrified? In other words, have you ever read any parenting book whatsoever? If so, you need How Not To Kill Your Baby , a hilarious parody of every fear-mongering, crazy-making pregnancy and parenting manual you've ever cringed over. Just consider the following advice: * "As you know if you have ever seen someone give birth in a movie or television show, all newborns emerge with adorable round faces, pudgy limbs, and twinkling eyes. If, by contrast, the nurse hands you a tiny, squawling creature with the face of an old man and skin covered in goo, hand it back immediately. There has clearly been some sort of mixup with a nearby ward for senile midgets." * "It's essential that you keep careful track of your baby's every bodily function. That way, when she is president of the United States and a paranoid-minded conspiracy movement springs up denying her eligibility for the position, you will have documentary proof that she did, in fact, poop on U.S. soil at 8:23AM on February 23." * "When choosing a nursery school, make sure to visit first, and ask the teachers about their educational philosophies. Then ask about their criminal records. If they insist they have none, you may need to keep asking, perhaps while shining a bright light in their face. Also, take their fingerprints, then follow them home from a discreet distance and go through their trash. Oh, and don't forget to thank them for their dedication to helping the young!" * "It is easy to adjust your parenting techniques as your children grow: simply do and say the exact same things, but raise your voice by one decibel for every year of your child's age." How Not To Kill Your Baby is printed on child-safe, 100% piranha-free paper, and bound without the use of exploding staples. You'll get no such promise from What To Expect When You're Expecting . How Not To Kill Your Baby is the book for you... unless you're some kind of baby-hating creep who wants to parent all wrong.
Andrews McMeel Pub 2012-03-20 136 pages

A Complete and Utter Failure A Celebration of Also - Rans, Runners-Up, Never - Weres and Total Flops

Neil Steinberg
So you've got these fond hopes for blissful love, professional glory, fame, and fortune. But in the back of your mind there's that nagging fear. The man of your dreams will laugh in your face. Your hated office rival will come up with some whizbang marketing idea and get promoted, while you'll be asked to "help out with the phones." Steven Spielberg will buy the rights to your screenplay, spend $40 million producing it, and the critics will savage the film, mercilessly singling out your work for especially contemptuous, poisonous derision. But hey, everybody fails sometime. It's inevitable. So don't fear failure. Embrace it. In Complete And Utter Failure, Neil Steinberg joyfully explores the many fascinating facets of failure, from pointless failure (a brief history of several very dumb attempts to climb Mount Everest) to product failure (Reddi-Bacon, smokeless cigarettes, and Baby Jesus dolls) to institutionalized failure (the horrifying Dickensian spectacle of the National Spelling Bee, in which 8,999,999 children out of 9,000,000 fail in an excruciatingly public and humiliating fashion). This delightful book is filled with surprising and useless arcana--who really invented the telephone, what turned on Isaac Newton--guaranteed to help you annoy people at cocktail parties. Along the way Steinberg meditates on his own myriad miscues and disappointments, beginning with his failure to perform a magic trick in front of the neighborhood kids at age four (he blames Captain Kangaroo). Complete And Utter Failure is a wonderfully literate, witty book that issues a ringing message for our times: If at first you don't succeed, have a scotch and forget about it.
Broadway Books 1995-10 272 pages

Is it good for the Jews? more stories from the old country and the new

Biro, Adam
“Jewish stories,” writes Adam Biro, “resemble every people’s stories.” Yet at the same time there is no better way to understand the soul, history, millennial suffering, or, crucially, the joys of the Jewish people than through such tales—“There’s nothing,” writes Biro, “more revelatory of the Jewish being.” With Is It Good for the Jews? Biro offers a sequel to his acclaimed collection of stories Two Jews on a Train . Through twenty-nine tales—some new, some old, but all finely wrought and rich in humor—Biro spins stories of characters coping with the vicissitudes and reverses of daily life, while simultaneously painting a poignant portrait of a world of unassimilated Jewish life that has largely been lost to the years. From rabbis competing to see who is the most humble, to the father who uses suicide threats to pressure his children into visiting, to three men berated by the Almighty himself for playing poker, Biro populates his stories with memorable characters and absurd—yet familiar—situations, all related with a dry wit and spry prose style redolent of the long tradition of Jewish storytelling. A collection simultaneously of foibles and fables, adversity and affection, Is It Good for the Jews? reminds us that if in the beginning was the word, then we can surely be forgiven for expecting a punch line to follow one of these days.
The University of Chicago Press 2009-10-15 140 pages

The racing worm brothers

Barwin, Gary
One day, Aaron and Ryan decide to adopt a pair of worms. They have a wonderful afternoon playing with their worms--named Pinky and Worm, by the way--but soon realize that what these little guys really want to do is race. The boys do everything they can to help: encouraging them, nurturing them, and making maps and sleep-stations to plant en route. Somehow things don't seem to move along terribly fast, and the boys actually lose track of their small squirmy buddies!
Annick 1999 32 pages