Miriam Peskowitz

This book is a wide-ranging exploration--both personal and journalistic--of a well-defined core idea. Peskowitz looks at the problem often called "the mommy wars," which is generally understood in psychological terms of interpersonal conflict and "identity issues." But throughout the book, she insists: these are fundamentally structural issues at the societal level, not psychological issues at the individual level. I totally agree and enjoyed reading her particular development of this claim. show more While sometimes a bit repetitive, The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars is a strong, accessible, and refreshingly nonsexist treatment of a big cultural conversation. show less

Marvelous. My sons and I would have had so much fun with so many of these.

Picnic games like Water Balloon Volleyball, and, even better, sponges instead of balloons for Catch. Especially for Catch the Baby.

The sneaky "A Paper You Can Walk Through." Just take a sheet of junk mail, fold & cut a certain way, and you'll have a ring large enough to circumscribe your body.

Of course I loved the Labyrinth section. They're explained clearly enough you can copy their design, and almost clearly enough show more you could design your own.

I adore the I'm Bored section. Especially Call the Oldest Member of Your Family. Seriously.

Even now:
My young adult son and I played Dots today, a game I used to know, simple pencil and paper. We're going to investigate the Tic-Tac-Toe Around the World pages soon. And the card games.

The Decoupage Bowl looks doable. I might do it, even though I don't need another display bowl.

The ABC sentence game will be good for when we walk together and have nothing to converse about (even though we walk together every day we usually talk almost non-stop, though...). We tried it, started at D and got to N before we got distracted.

And making a windowsill garden from kitchen scraps like sprouting sweet potato is something we kind of do already, but it has more ideas and help for us. show less

I can see where this book could appeal to boys, if not for the fact that so many of them are tethered to their game consoles and thus unable to enjoy it. But this is a good book to give to boys and send them outside to do things. It also has a lot of good trivia, poems, historical events, allusions, so on that boys (and just any educated person) should know. I would have enjoyed this book as a boy. Nowadays, I think it is more a book to browse at leisure rather than read straight through, show more which is what I ended up doing. Personally, I found it a little reminiscent of the Boy Scout Handbook I had when I was a scout (though the scout book had much better illustrations). It is also reminiscent of older manuals, which I am sure is intentional. There is a bit of everything here, and I think anyone can learn something, or maybe remember something they learned as a child. show less

I didn't read every word of this - after all I'm an adult with a disability and I won't be playing basketball or doing cartwheels any time soon. But I read enough to know that I would have loved this as a girl. What a variety of games, crafts, chants, tidbits from history & other courses, poems, a reading list, 'how-tos' for athletics, etc. etc.! Told with the voice of a favorite aunt. I recommend it as a gift to a girl age 7-10, as there's both stuff she can do now, and stuff she'll grow show more into. I'm going to let my hair grow out so I can get it up with a chopstick. And right now I'm off to add some of the recommended books to my 'to-read' shelf! show less