In a series of funny, touching, unabashed and uninhibited vignettes, Levenson--aided and abetted by the incomparable Whitney Darrow, Jr.--quotes the lovely, innocent logic of little people as they express their views of the big people's world. (dust cover).

Takes a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Konner tells the story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain--From publisher description.

The author relates the remarkable story of his pianist mother and her sister, child prodigies who escaped certain death when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, adopted new identities, and came under the protection of a Nazi commander who heard them play.

"A down-to-earth, inspiring book about the American promise fulfilled." -President Bill Clinton "Fascinating . . . . Made me wish I had been born in the Bronx." -Barbara Walters A touching and provocative collection of memories that evoke the history of one of America's most influential boroughs-the Bronx-through some of its many success stories The vivid oral histories in Arlene Alda's Just Kids from the Bronx reveal what it was like to grow up in the place that bred the influencers in just about every field of endeavor. The Bronx is where Michael Kay, the New York Yankees' play-by-play broadcaster, first experienced baseball; where J. Crew's CEO Millard ("Mickey") Drexler found his ambition; where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dava Sobel fell in love with science; and where local music making inspired singer-songwriter Dion DiMucci and hip-hop's Grandmaster Melle Mel. The parks, the pickup games, the tough and tender mothers, the politics, the gangs, the food-for people who grew up in the Bronx, childhood recollections are fresh. Arlene Alda's own Bronx memories were a jumping-off point from which to reminisce with a nun, a police officer, an urban planner, and with Al Pacino, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Maira Kalman, Bobby Bonilla, Mary Higgins Clark, and many other leading artists, athletes, scientists, and entrepreneurs-experiences spanning six decades of Bronx living. Alda then arranged these pieces of the past, from looking for violets along the banks of the Bronx River to the wake-up calls from teachers who recognized potential, into one great collective story, a filmlike portrait of the Bronx from the early twentieth century until today.

Written from a liberal Jewish perspective, this thought-provoking book presents a wealth of down-to-earth, general advice on helping children to grow morally and spiritually.

From Babar to Dumbo, the elephant has long fascinated children as well as their parents. Here, eighty stunning photographs encompass every aspect of the elephant's life and world: elephants big and small, African and Asian, in the wild and domesticated, at play and at rest. Whether taken from the air, from underwater, or from the side of a jeep, these images will capture the imagination of any child. Steve Bloom's extraordinary photographs depict the elephants in their natural environment as well as in their unique relationships with people. Here are elephant babies playing in the dust, families rolling in the mud, polo-playing elephants, elephants at bath time, impressive herds roaming the plains, and much more. The entertaining texts by David Henry Wilson explain anything and everything of interest about elephants, from why they flap their ears to how much they weigh and how much they eat.

In non-threatening and hilarious illustrations, this book underscores the way most parents totally freak out over the subject of sex when it comes to explaining it to their children. One end of the spectrum has the parents who avoid the subject altogether, while the other end of the spectrum is pulling out charts, diagrams and videos. The goal of this book is to relax the parent and encourage them to take a straight-forward, but not overwhelming approach to teaching their kids... there are no materials for learning or illustrations to share with your kids... this is a humorous book for grownups, and not a manual on teaching the subject. A cute book to have on your coffee table or in a guest room. It's sweet illustrations will make anyone laugh and only Queen Victoria would have problems with the content. It's straight forward and honest.

Selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times ' The Gardener and the Carpenter should be required reading for anyone who is, or is thinking of becoming a parent' Financial Times Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call 'parenting' is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the huge industry surrounding it have transformed childcare into obsessive, controlling, and goal-orientated labour intended to create a particular kind of child, and therefore a particular kind of adult. Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. 'Parenting' won't make children learn - but caring parents let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment. In The Gardener and the Carpenter , the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar twenty-first-century picture of parenting is profoundly wrong - it's not just based on bad science, it's bad for children and their parents too.

non fiction

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A dazzling intellectual treatise on the promise of American culture, education, and democracy by dynamic Renaissance man Leon Botstein, called "an intellectual Bo Jackson" by "The New York Times". Claiming America is stronger than ever, Botstein takes on the cultural pessimists he believes are harming our youth and damaging our democracy.

Thirteen-year-old Annat and her older brother, Malchick, leave their sheltered upbringing and reunite with their father, a shaman-healer. With him they venture into the magical kingdom of La Souterraine. Only then and there do they learn what their heritage means to them and to those around them.

Transracial adoption is a controversial area of research and practice in child welfare. The authors, a sociologist and a social worker, have contributed much to its understanding through a series of studies that began in 1972 of white families that have adopted nonwhite (mostly black) children. This book reports on the latest phase of their research, which was based on interviews with most of the families and adoptees in the original sample. The purpose of the interviews was to explore the adoptees' racial identities and self-esteem, and the long-term effects of transracial adoption on the adoptees and their families. The authors present their findings in a clear, vivid, and coherent manner; objectively examine the issues raised by the study; and thoughtfully formulate implications for policy and practice. The study supports their major conclusion that `where no appropriate permanent inracial placement can be found for a non-white child . . . transracial adoption should be seriously considered.' A timely, unique, and sophisticated work that should be read widely by students, practitioners, and policymakers in child welfare. Choice Reporting on the third phase of a 14-year study of transracial adoption, this volume focuses on the adoption of non-white children by white families. It includes personal interviews with 96 mothers and fathers and 218 children which help to answer questions about the long-term effects of transracial adoption on the adoptees' mental and emotional health and their racial identities. These valuable empirical data are combined with discussions of the practices of adoption agencies, recent court rulings, and alternative forms of adoption.

Acclaimed photographer Elinor Carucci takes on her most challenging and rewarding subject yet: motherhood. When Elinor Carucci gave birth to her twins, she discovered the highs and lows that are part of every new mother’s experience. A noted photographer accustomed to documenting intimate moments, Carucci used her camera to deal with the maelstrom of emotions. She followed her babies as they grew into toddlers, then children, with their own complex relationships. Carucci’s dramatic use of light and shadow and her uncanny ability to capture the freedom with which children express themselves imbue her images with a marvelous clarity. By turns touching, surprising, sensual, joyful, and unflinching, these striking pictures convey moments that are at once personal and universal—a child’s runny nose, a fight between brother and sister, a fast-food meal, a warm embrace, a sleepless night, an ice cream cone. The result, as Francine Prose remarks in her foreword, are images that "seem new, no matter how well we may think we know . . . the experiences and feelings they depict. . . . Nothing, we feel, is left out."

"Covering table manners, car manners, playground manners, school manners, and more, this is a book that is sure to delight (and horrify) adults and children of all ages"--

Lost for sixty years in a Prague attic, the secret diary of a fourteen-year-old prodigy who later died at Auschwitz describes with keen insight into Jewish life the increasing horror of his situation but also reveals a brilliant, droll teenager with a hunger for life.

Thomas Jefferson was wild about numbers. He was constantly counting, measuring, and observing things that caught his interest. He loved sharing his discoveries and reading the discoveries of others. But when a famous Frenchman published a book about America, Jefferson was appalled: all the information in the book was wrong. The author insisted that America was a wretched, dismal place, where birds could not sing, dogs could not bark, and everything and everyone was puny and weak. Thomas Jefferson resolved to set the record straight - with numbers - and prove to the world that the new nation was worthy of investment.