In Forty Weeks of Keeping Your Head Down Bill Bounds has written an entertaining first person look at the baby process. This genre, pioneered by Grant Eppler in What to Expect When She’s Expecting, gives the reader a very personal view of what happens on the long road of pregnancy. While Bounds’ experiences are personal, his experience is common to us all, complete with OB/GYN visits, scary moments, and the eventual joy of a birth scene. Other new dads can read the book front to back, or pick up and scan the chapters for approaching or familiar territory. Forty Weeks of Keeping Your Head Down is organized in short chapters, with titles that are sometimes very clear on content, and...

The subtitle to Craig Baird’s new book I’m going to be a Dad: Now what? joins the ranks of other dad primers like The Expectant Father by Armin Brott. Where Baird’s book is different is that it represents a new trend in dad parenting books, as stay-at-home dads become the norm, as do other complicated living and financial circumstances families cobble together to pay the mortgage, and put pampers and formula on the table. While these new books don’t differ much in the parenting and medical advice they dispense, they do offer advice for dads in different situations. The subtitle to I’m going to be a Dad: Now what? is “Everything you need to know about first time fatherhood....

TREAT HER LIKE YOUR BOSS No matter how tired or fed up you are with how things are going at the office or store or school, or wherever you might work, if the person who signs your paycheck walks in, somehow there is a little reserve of goodwill saved up, just for him or her. From out of thin air comes a smile or a sudden lilt in the voice, or a very optimistic assessment of the absolute disaster staring everyone in the face. This good-natured version of you is like a can of emergency survival instinct, always there somewhere, just waiting to be used. This is the source to which you might consider turning when you are completely fed up with your daughter, when she has found your last nerve and...

The Secret of the Junkyard Shadow is a very creative mystery story.It is about three cousins who happen to see a man taking stuff from a junkyard. Then some people say some of their stuff has disappeared! It turns out that the junkyard shadow was only trying to do good deeds! I recommend this book for ages 8 to 10. This book is not violent at all, but it is a very intriging story. Written by Hadley (age 9)

Our friends at DadLabs.com are at it again with a new book that tries to put in prose what they do so well in video. And, they do a great job, with tongue in cheek article son everything about pregnancy through Year 1 (subsequent volumes will treat older kids). The new book is DadLabs Guide to Fatherhood. It has many practical tips on subjects like picking a baby name and how to change a diaper, just as you will find on DadLabs TV, but much of the value of this book is the ability to laugh at the early stages of parenthood, just as your pregnant partner is taking it so seriously. There is a time for soulful feelings about incipient fatherhood, but also a time for having a beer and making some...

I have not given this much thought, but the idea behind this article is that dads are way under-represented in kids’ fiction, save for the famous Hop on Pop. Let me know what you think – we’ll even do a contest. Name kids’ books with dads who are at least present in the story and extra points if they are positive literary forces.    Where are all the nice, normal dads in children’s books? Fathers in children’s books are rarely positive figures. But as dads do more childcare, it’s time publishers took note [From Where are all the nice, normal dads in children's books? - Times Online ] Contest details to come…

Scholastic Inc., the children’s publisher of favorites like the Harry Potter, Goosebumps and Clifford series, may be best known for its books, but a consumer watchdog group accuses the company of using its classroom book clubs to push video games, jewelry kits and toy cars. [From Watchdog Group Says Scholastic Is Selling Not Just Books to Children - NYTimes.com] While we like a lot of books Scholastic publishes, and their program to provide books to schools, it’s hard not to be quite miffed when we receive what is basically a toy catalog about three times each school year. When I was a child, living in rural Wisconsin, the Scholastic book order was my big chance to buy my own books....

11 Birthdays is one of my favorite books of 2008.It is the story of a girl named Amanda who always has her birthday with a boy named Leo. For their eleventh birthday they don’t have their birthday together. Then, something odd happens: their birthday starts repeating over and over again. Why is this happening? Read this book to find out! This is a great book and a mind-bending mystery.I think this book is for ages nine and up. I think that Wendy Mass is a great writer and I think she should write other books too! Hadley ( age 8 )

Well, sorta… Excite Books (ExciteBooks.com) is a subscription book service that sends books monthly to your child, along with a few extra toys and goodies to keep him or her interested. Packages start at $4.95 per month and books are selected based on grade level and sex of child. ExciteBooks is the brainchild of Austin George, a commercial pilot, who has always had a commitment to education. Before founding Excite Books, George volunteered as a motivational speaker in schools, where he was often surprised at the lack of books in the school library. George created Excite Books to “add excitement and energy into a child’s reading activities by allowing the child to be an active...

It’s kind of gross, but our friend, Howard Bennett, is writing a book on “the gross facts of life.” He is quoted in Monday’s Washington Post discussing what happens if you drink urine or eat insects. Not exactly cocktail conversation but he hopes topics that will be fun for kids as a way into reading more about science and how the body works. In just this short article, he gives examples of where you might want to use urine in an emergency situation. We’ll be looking forward to getting more excerpts of his book and seeing it when it comes out next year could