Collection: Parenting

The first day of life is different for every animal. Human newborns don't do much at all, but some animals hit the ground running. The Caldecott Honor-winning team Steve Jenkins and Robin Page apply their considerable talents to revealing how twenty two different species, from the emperor penguin to the Siberian tiger, adapt to that traumatic first few hours of life, with or without parental help. Jenkins's vividly colorful cut-paper illustrations are eye-poppingly three-dimensional and as exquisite as ever. While the text is short and sweet, an illustrated guide provides descriptions of the twenty two animals in the back. Fantastic!

This indispensable handbook, from the author of the million-selling Expectant Father, provides a reassuring month-by-month overview of your baby's first year. It covers the milestones in your child's development; ways you can bond with your child and support your partner; and what's going on with you, as a new dad.

The fourth edition of The New Father features a user-friendly new design and is updated from cover to cover with the latest information about healthcare, financial planning, parental leave and work-life balance, and much more. It incorporates the expertise of leading pediatricians and researchers, and the real-life experiences of hundreds of dads and moms.

Illustrated with stress-relieving cartoons, The New Father is a friendly, readable, and inclusive companion for all new dads. (Moms will love it, too!)

Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron's frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son.

Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, Lori's younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."

C.J. is gender variant or gender nonconforming, whichever you prefer. Whatever the term, Lori has a boy who likes girl stuff--really likes girl stuff. He floats on the gender-variation spectrum from super-macho-masculine on the left all the way to super-girly-feminine on the right. He's not all pink and not all blue. He's a muddled mess or a rainbow creation. Lori and her family choose to see the rainbow.

Written in Lori's uniquely witty and warm voice and launched by her incredibly popular blog of the same name, Raising My Rainbow is the unforgettable story of her wonderful family as they navigate the often challenging but never dull privilege of raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader's guide and bonus content

Nourish Your Toddler Without the Stress!

Jump-start your toddler's healthy relationship with food with quick, easy recipes and actionable advice. In this comprehensive guide for busy parents of 1- to 4-year-olds, Simone Ward--food writer, cookbook author and mom of five--provides everything you need to keep mealtime filling, flavorful and low-stress. Navigate issues like portion sizes, introducing sugar and picky eating with delicious meals, exciting sides and make-ahead snacks like:

10-Minute Peanut Noodles
Whole-Wheat Protein Blender Waffles
Oven-Baked Turkey & Spinach Meatballs
Crispy Zucchini Fries
Lemon & Blueberry Yogurt Muffins
20-Minute Iron-Rich Tomato Soup

Featuring an invaluable month of well-balanced meal plans using the book's recipes--plus allergen warnings and substitution suggestions for dietary restrictions--this is a cookbook you'll be sure to keep off the shelf and in the kitchen. And the best part? These meals are so delicious that your whole family will be asking for seconds!

This is Dad's opportunity to share his life story in his very own guided journal that can be kept as a forever keepsake for generations to come.

Learn all about Dad's life from childhood, teenage years, adulthood and parenting by allowing him to share those special stories and memorable moments.

'Dear Dad - I Want To Hear Your Story' includes:

- Guided questions to help bring together the special memories and stories that may never have been asked or shared before.

- Spaces to provide photos, notes and special memories

- Inspirational quotes

- A Family Tree template to add generational information

- Plus, much, much more...

'Dear Dad - I Want To Hear Your Story' is the perfect gift to record all of his memories and stories in this beautifully created guided journal.

Most new mothers bring their infants to the doctor but ignore any distressing feelings or sensations they might themselves have--that sense of being "rattled" at many moments throughout the day and night. In Rattled, Dr. Nicole Pensak shares her own experiences and those of her patients to help new mothers feel informed, validated, and guided through matrescence. After giving birth, a woman often feels like a completely different person. It may sound dramatic, but the rollercoaster of physical and psychological changes affects brain and body in a similar way that adolescence changes us. To compound that, many women hide these feelings, worrying that something is wrong with them.

Dr. Nicole Pensak is here to reassure us that being "rattled" is normal, and not at all surprising. After all, seismic changes in identity and emotion have occurred. Research shows that a woman's brain shifts in real, biological ways very quickly after giving birth. Many women become hypervigilant, for good reason: the brain is telling her to stay alert because she has a human to keep alive and safe. While these brainpower boosts can cause anxious feelings, they can also help to manage the distress and harness the advantages of the postpartum brain. In fact, this is a time of neuroplasticity, when the brain is more receptive to positive reinforcement.

Trained at Yale and Harvard and certified in perinatal mental health, Dr. Pensak provides practical and emotional support, helping to relieve the anxiety and pressure for perfection in motherhood and paving the way for a better beginning for families and babies. She discusses mental health treatment and the upside of therapy during this changing time, and offers accessible scientific information, relatable anecdotes, and strategies for self-care. The result is a reassuring and practical handbook that new mothers and their families will refer to time and again.

A delightful drinks book for couples, Kindred Spirits serves up 40 cocktail recipes to enjoy with your sweetie, 40+ photos, and creative date ideas that will add some spiritedfun to your love life.

From the mixologist behind the popular @bevsbybeverly Instagram and TikTok accounts, these tempting cocktail recipes take date night to the next level. Organized by type of date--from the classic dinner date to daytime dates, movie nights, double dates, special occasions, and more--these indulgent cocktails for two include:

• Up All Night Espresso Martinis to fuel a passionate game night and/or a night of passion.
• StrawBAE & Balsamics to toast each other while on a romantic picnic in the park.
• Hottie Toddies for a cozy movie night at home with your hottie.

Lush photography sets the mood while sidebars offer memorable date activities--like Arts & Craft & Sip Night and Couchella--a bucket list for couples, a roundup of best rom-coms, a sexy playlist, and more. Alongside cocktail paraphernalia or a bottle of liquor, Kindred Spirits is a lovely newlywed, engagement, anniversary, or housewarming gift for couples who enjoy mixing up tasty cocktails at home. Cheers to love, libations, and happily ever after!

MAKES DATE NIGHT FUN AND EASY TO PLAN: Mixing and sipping on a delicious bev with your boo is an enjoyable way to spend time together. Kindred Spirits offers 40 delicious drink recipes plus tons of great ideas for romantic activities that will bring couples closer together, such as a dance party, a home-cooked meal, and low-key ways to celebrate Valentine's Day.

IDEAL ENGAGEMENT OR WEDDING GIFT: Rather than gifting an engaged couple a handbook on wedding planning, give them the gift that keeps on giving. Packed with tasty cocktail recipes and fun things to do together, this will be one of the best engagement, shower, or wedding gifts they'll receive.

FOR COUPLES AT ANY STAGE: Alongside a shaker, playful ice cube molds, or pretty glassware, Kindred Spirits makes a thoughtful gift for couples at any stage of their relationship. The recipes are flexible enough to inspire delectable drinks for de-stressing while wedding planning, celebrating a milestone anniversary, cheers-ing to a new home, or toasting a newly empty nest.

ROMANTIC GIFT FOR HIM OR HER: Give this to your mixology-loving partner as a thoughtful anniversary or Valentine's Day present, or as a stocking stuffer. Kindred Spirits is full of ways to keep having fun with your person.

Perfect for:

• Couples who are interested in mixology and like making drinks at home
• Newlyweds and engaged couples
• Cocktail-loving couples who are moving in together or have bought their first house
• Shoppers looking for an anniversary, engagement, housewarming, or Valentine's Day gift
• Fans of @bevsbybeverly and popular cocktail accounts with beautiful visuals and easy recipes

Sylvia Brownrigg's "wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and found

When Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.

Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick's own father, Gawen--also absent--had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.

Reconstructing Gawen's short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.

Being dropped off at childcare or cared for by a baby-sitter means saying good-bye to Mom or Dad--and for many toddlers, bye-bye is a big deal. This gentle bilingual English-Spanish board book helps ease the transition and avoid sepa­ration anxiety with simple rituals: hugs and kisses, a big wave, a deep breath, and the confidence to seek comfort with the new caregiver or other children.

Humorous art keeps students focused as they practice traditional cursive handwriting. Addresses all 26 letters of the alphabet through writing letters, words, and sentences. Also includes step-by-step letter formation, writing upper- and lowercase letters, writing numbers, short paragraphs, and more!

For fans of How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera and The Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban, Loving Me After We is the book that will teach you how to love yourself after you've lost yourself in a toxic relationship, and embody confidence, emotional security, and self-love.

A breakup can feel like the end of the world--but what if it could serve as the start of a better you?

In our search for love, affection, and acceptance, we often find ourselves repeating old patterns with new partners. Our brains seek familiar touch points as a way of navigating the unpredictability of our lives, but this means we can find ourselves reentering relationships with the same toxic dynamics. Toxic relationships are especially hard to recover from, especially when they uncovered some of our earliest and deepest traumas. When we leave them, we often find ourselves nursing a broken heart, again and again.

Even Ginger Dean, a celebrated psychotherapist, found herself stuck in this cycle, but something eventually clicked: Heartbreak didn't have to be a foregone conclusion. Heartbreak can bring us back home to ourselves, not only in our romantic relationships, but in every area of our lives. Once we start healing our hearts, other aspects of our lives open up to bloom.

Through personal anecdotes, practical guidance, and a little bit of tough love, Ginger brings her wisdom and empathy to any reader who is ready to join the revolution of women healing their hearts so they can start the best love affair they've ever known--with themselves. Loving ourselves, healing our emotional wounds, setting boundaries, breaking trauma bonds, and doing the necessary healing work after a toxic relationship is a radical decision in today's society. We become savage self-lovers. We are loving me after we.

Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely--and deeply researched--account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.

The history of adoption is rarely told from an adoptee's perspective. Wellington remedies this gap by framing the chronicle of adoption in America using her own life story. She describes growing up in a family with which she had no biological connection, giving birth to her own biological children, and then enduring the death of her sister, who was also adopted. As she reckons with the pain and unanswered questions of her own experience, she explores broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children.

According to Wellington, US adoption practices in America are shrouded in secrecy, for they frequently cast shame on unmarried women, women struggling with fertility, and "illegitimate" babies and children. As the United States once again finds itself embroiled in heated disputes over women's bodily autonomy--disputes in which adoption plays a central role--Wellington's book offers a unique and much-needed frame of reference.

Baby Massage offers parents and caretakers safe and easy-to-learn massage techniques that reinforce bonding and all-around wellbeing. Step-by-step pictures show simple methods to soothe fretful babies, help them to get to sleep, and ease the pain of common ailments such as colic, and teething. Massage has been proven to enhance babies' and toddlers' brain development, encouraging brighter, happier children--and this beautifully illustrated guide makes it abundantly clear how easy it is to learn how.

In an era in which class divisions are becoming starker than ever, some individuals are choosing to marry across class. The Power of the Past traces the lives of a subset of these individuals - highly-educated adults who married a partner raised in a class different from their own, primarily between those from blue- and white-color backgrounds. Drawing upon detailed interviews with spouses who revealed the inner workings of their marriages, Jessi Streib shows that crossing class lines is not easy, and that even though these couples shared bank accounts, mortgages, children, and friends, each spouse was still shaped by the class of their past, and consequently, so was their marriage.

Streib reveals what was rarely apparent to the husbands and wives she interviewed. The class of their past did not only matter in determining the amount of money they had as children or what job their parents went off to each morning; It also mattered in more subtle ways, by systematically shaping their ideas of how to go about their daily lives. Upwardly mobile spouses who grew up in blue-collar families learned to take a laissez-faire approach to the world around them: they preferred to go with the flow, make the most of the moment, and avoid self-imposed constraints. Their spouses, who grew up in professional white-collar families, however, wanted to manage the world around them: they organized, planned, monitored, and oversaw. Living with a spouse who was born into a different class means navigating these differences - differences that appeared across nearly every aspect of their lives, from how they manage their finances, to how they manage their time - both at home and on vacation - to ideas about how their children should be raised.

The Power of the Past illustrates that when individuals are raised in different classes, merged lives do not lead to merged ideas about how to lead those lives. Individuals can come together across class lines, but their enduring class characteristics cannot be left behind.

Parent to Parent: Raising Children from Prison entails the painful and real emotions a parent experiences while incarcerated and separated from their children. The book explains how an incarcerated parent must discover, find, and explore himself before he can be beneficial to his children. It involves the personal sharing of the author's story, and how he used many resources including, but not limited to, self-reflection and self-examination in order to overcome the many past hurts he experienced. He discusses the importance of maintaining mental and physical health, how to achieve it, and in other chapters, he discusses the difference between discipline and punishment, the importance of communication, and healing, forgiveness, and love. Also, the author offers more in-depth discussions as well as techniques and ideas of how parents can be actively involved with their children while incarcerated. Once a parent begins to make changes in his/her own life, then they can begin to make a positive influence in their children's lives. In addition, the author has provided a recommended reading list as well as examples of some of his own correspondence while incarcerated between himself and his children. Also added is a chart of "ages and growth stages for children" as well as a list of support groups for incarcerated parents.

One woman's hilarious and fascinating quest to expose the truth behind fraudulent Twitter profiles: romance scammers beware, you have met your match!

Online romance fraud is a problem across the globe. It causes financial and emotional devastation, yet many people refuse to take it seriously. This is the story of one middle-aged woman in a cardigan determined to understand this growing phenomenon.

No other woman has had so many online romances - from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William - and Becky Holmes is a favourite among peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers. By winding up scammers and investigating the truth behind their profiles, Becky shines a revealing, revolting and hilarious light on a very shady corner of the internet.

Featuring first-hand accounts of victims, examples of scripts used by fraudsters, a look into the psychology of fraud and of course plenty of Becky's hysterical interactions with scammers, this is a must-read for anyone who needs a reminder that Keanu Reeves is NOT in love with them.