Child Health Books

Surprise ending. Very good book with common Asian theme of respecting elders.

The story is about a basket, boy and his grandfather. The basket was used for many things. We liked when the young boy told his father to return the basket. We learned that everytone should be respectful and nice to older people.

This is what I like about Ed Young. You never know what the heck he's gonna do next. Some authors, like Demi, have a single style and do not waver from it, come hell or high water. Mr. Young is different. Some days he feels like doing a picture book full of colorful blind mice. Other days he's more interested in retelling of Little Red Riding Hood but in a Chinese vein. He is also, I must add, an inconsistent creator. He's just as likely to produce a stunning, "Lon Po Po" as he is a dreadful "Turkey Girl" or a so-so, "Sons of the Dragon King". To be frank, this is what I like about him. Young's unpredictable. A loose canon. I was, therefore, delighted to pick up "I, Doko". I knew it was an unusual offering, but also just as likely to be stunning as ridiculous. After a quick read, I can state with zero hesitation that this book falls squarely into the "stunning" camp. Young may not know where his next book is going to lead him, but if it's anywhere near the direction you find in "I, Doko", he'll be doing well.

The book is told from the point of view of a basket or "doko". In Nepal, this doko explains its role in a family's life. It is bought by its master, Yeh-yeh and used to carry babies, food, kindling wood, and eventually Yeh-yeh's deceased wife Nei-nei. Yeh-yeh has a son who grows quickly into a man and who starts his own family. The doko reports happy occasions like weddings and births in which it plays a special part. Unfortunately Yeh-yeh is growing old and can no longer help in the fields. He spends his time instead growing close to his grandson Wangal. One day, Wangal and Yeh-yeh overhear Wangal's father (Yeh-yeh's son) telling his wife that the next day he will leave his aging father on the nearest temple steps so that the priests can take care of him from now on. The grandfather and grandson (and basket) are distraught at this news but can think of no way to save Yeh-yeh. The next morning, the doko carries Yeh-yeh on his son's back to the temple when Wangal asks his father to be sure to bring the doko back. When asked why he replies that when it is time for HIS father to be put on the temple steps, the basket will again prove useful. Stunned, the father brings Yeh-yeh home again and, "Wangal's love and respect for his grandfather inspired and transformed the whole village in how to treat elders".

I can see farsighted grandparents already purchasing this book for their wide-eyed grandchildren in the hopes that the modern equivalent of the temple steps (i.e. nursing homes) be avoided as a result. In a little note at the beginning of the book, Young states that this book was, "Adapted from a folktale appearing in various forms in Nepal and in many other Asian countries, most often conveyed in the oral vernacular". You may rest assured that this translation from an oral tale into the written word has not suffered the text one jot. Young writes this story with a steady hand and the fact that we are hearing this story from the mouth (?) of a basket is both original and effective.

Complimenting the text are Young's illustrations, which are stunning. Sometimes a good picture book contains a single striking illustration that the reader keeps returning to again and again and again. In Jane Yolen's, "Owl Moon" it's the first direct shot of an owl. In, "I, Doko", it is the picture of the father being told by his son that he may one day suffer the same fate as the parent on his back. His eyes overflow with shocked/hurt tears and reflected in them is the image of his son, arms stretched imploringly out to him. I've sat for minutes on end contemplating this picture and I am certain that children will do the same. The rest of the pictures aren't anything to scoff over, of course. Young renders these pages in gouache, pastel and collage, not afraid to punctuate the borders and important elements of his tale with a bright gleaming gold. The doko is often splattered with paint, thereby allowing its collage body a chance to look handdrawn. These pictures utilize silhouettes, wide open spaces, dark nighttime canvases illuminated by a single light, and a thin streak of pink that alerts us to the dawn's approach. Until this book was published, Young's, "Lon Po Po" hadn't an illustrative equivalent. Now it has.

If there is one thing about this book that makes it a little confusing, it's Young's refusal to name Yeh-yeh's son/Wangal's father. I had to skip back and forth through the text to figure out who exactly was taking who to the temple steps and why. If Young had named the unnamed father, it would have cleared up a lot of confusion along the way. Otherwise, once kids have the gist of the story they'll never quibble with such details. This is the kind of book that will deeply influence child readers on a thoughtful and almost painfully beautiful level. I gush. I apologize. But if you get a chance, definitely check out, "I, Doko" on your next trip to the library or bookstore. It hasn't gotten itself a lot of attention. Amend this.

I.Q. was the class pet. Not the teacher's favorite mind you, but the real class pet. He was a rat, but would have much rather have been a student in Mrs. Furber's class. It was "Health Month" and they were all going to an assembly to "learn how to get fit." At the assembly his tummy started to rumble and he was embarrassed because the children laughed at him. He didn't eat his breakfast and it was rumble time. The speaker told all the children that if they passed the fitness test they would "receive a gold ribbon." Everyone was excited, especially I.Q., because he wanted one too!

Mrs. Jugar was the physical education teacher and she would be recording their results. Brett, Kim, Tim, Holly . . . and there was I.Q. on the list! They were recording things like how many sit ups, long jumps and pull ups everyone could do. They were supposed to eat "different kinds of foods," but when Mrs. Furber talked about the Food Pyramid there weren't brownies on it. I.Q. would have a lot of work to do in order to win a ribbon. Proper exercise, getting enough sleep and a balanced diet were just a few things he'd have to work on. I.Q. really wanted that ribbon. If he really worked at it, could he cut the mustard? Maybe he'd just have to cut out those brownies!

This is an excellent book to get children subtly interested in physical fitness. The whimsical artwork is adorable and the "before" and "after" shots of I.Q. are very amusing. This would be the perfect choice for a read aloud and discuss book in a classroom setting if you are planning sessions on encouraging health and physical fitness. Your classroom can also work on the President's Challenge and win a real award!

This is absolutly the best book. We used it for Fitness Month Storytime at our Library. It teaches the principles of healthy lifestyle at a level toddlers and older can grasp. It discusses exercise, diet, sleep, and drinking water. You can also stop and have them do the exercises with IQ. It also throws in some suspense...you don't really know for sure if he will win the gold ribbon. I copied the last page of the book for the kids to color,take home to put on the fridge, and reinforce what they learned. It turned out fantastic. Great, great book! You can't go wrong with this one.

It's Heath Month in I.Q.'s classroom, but I.Q. is worried that because he can't run as long or jump as far as the other students, he won't win a ribbon at the fitness test. I.Q. the mouse is challenged to do his best - and still he doesn't seem to be able to compete. His efforts will eventually win him something different in this warm survey of a student who wants to achieve the most.

This was book was so incredibly useful in the decision to vaccinate or not. I had read many books before which were either vehemently against or vigorously for vaccinations. I was at my wits end trying to find a source which presented the information in an unbiased format- this book does exactly that. The author has no agenda, other than wanting people to make informed decisions, and he presents the information fairly. There are no scary stories to play on your emotions, which many other books do present quite often. As a parent this book was indispenible and I wish every parent could have it in their home library!! You won't regret purchasing and reading this book!!

My wife and I figuratively nearly came to blows over the decision to immunize our children. It came down to the point where we _had_ to find an objective way to make a decision. So, as is our practice, we start reading books.

Only to find that every book written on this subject, on either side of the issue, is extremely inflammatory, biased, and inaccurate. I am not talking about a small sample of books -- the two of us read nearly a dozen books and several dozen articles. And our reading was doing more harm than good.

Until we found this book. This book finally gave us the objective information we were looking for, and we were able to make our decision.

The book is layed out with an introduction to general concepts, then a chapter per disease. Each chapter provides: 1) A description of the disease, with the range of effects observed from that disease, and the historical trend in the severity of outcomes from that disease. 2) A description of the efficacy ! of the vaccine (i.e. what is its effect on the number or severity of cases of the disease.) 3) A description of the range of other known effects of the vaccine, and the severity of those effects.

That is the essential material needed to make a decision about immunization, which is above all else a process of weighing one set of risks against another set of risks.

For those who wish to treat immunization as a decision, this book will help you do so.

This book was a great overview of why you should/should not vaccinate your children. I read the book in one day. I am waiting on another book that is newer for more up-to-date information, but I highly reccomend this easy to understand book.

This is not a book you'll curl up with in one afternoon. The writing is a bit technical and dry, so it's better read in increments.

BUT... if you want to re-examine what you know about childbirth and breastfeeding, this book is rock solid. The book is straight-forward and factual. It will give you food for thought that you will digest over a long period.

This book will affect you as a practitioner. I highly recommend it.

Finally someone dares to declare that having a medicalized birth is not the norm, just as bottlefeeding isn't the norm... I'm a family physician with a breastfeeding clinic since 1996, and I had begun noticing notable differences in the types of lactation problems between the midwife-assisted births and the gynecologist-assisted ones. Unfortunately, women are not aware of this and they themselves request epidurals for pain-free births. Little do they know that they are harvesting a multitude of related post-partum & breastfeeding problems, for themselves AND baby. Once this is explained to them, they often realise the connections and wish they had known... This is a book every practitioner doing deliveries should read. We really ought to assist laboring women with non-pharmacological pain-relieving techniques, not just medications.

This book is a must read for those that care about breastfeeding, birth, babies and mothers. An easy and yet infomative read.

I am Rose from Naches Valley Middle School. I think this book was great from the sad moments to happy ones. I would recommened this book to anyone.

When Julie finds out that Matt has cancer she does her best to get him through it. She was full of love for him and I felt that there was a very strong bond between them. I can't wait until another book by Jennifer Baker comes out!!

When Matt discovers he has cancer, Julie tries her hardest to be there for him. As Matt sinks into despair, Julie realizes that she has to be there for him, continue in school, AND pay the bills. It causes a HUGE strain on their marriage but Julie stays there for him thru thick and thin. Matt almost gives completely up on life until Julie gives him news that quickly causes him to realize that there is a reason to live.

Great story! Once again show the real strain of marriage and doesn't sugar coat it.

When we're young, one of the worst experiences is having someone else speak for us. This book by Mary Gray allows queer youth to speak from their own perspectives. Not only would I have liked this book as a youth, but I find it useful as an educator of late teens. Give it a try.

I picked up this book at my local library,reading it in the corner, terrified, lest anyone see that I wasinterested in reading about gays. When I did relax enough to read it, I devoured it. I found a part of myself in all of the teenagers in the book.I felt their struggles. I'm living their lives. I cried when I finished the book. I yearn to be comfortable enough to discuss my sexuality the way these teens did. Reading about their fight out of the closet was a cpomfort to me, a bisexual teenager who is not yet all the way out. I recommend this book to students, teachers, and anyone who has to face issues dealing with homosexuality in their everyday lives. I am getting upthe courage to buy a copy so I can have it to keep.

Ms. Gray is a fabulous editor-selecting the most incredible queer youth to represent the community today. As a queer youth, I too would have loved to read something as powerful as this. As a queer teacher, it is a resource for all students to understand the diversity in our state and country. If introduced into the schools, perhaps our schools will become just a little bit safer for ALL students.

Nicely done! A good follow-up to his WISC-R book, this is an enjoyable, in-depth look at something most psychologists don't know enough about.

brilliant, incisive, surprisingly funny and readable. A must-hav

I read Kaufman's book in a graduate class on assessment and intelligence testing. I still refer to it whenever I have unusual test scores with a WISC-III. It explains in a comprehensive and clear manner how a competent psychologist should interpret the WISC-III. It is worth every penny.

Thirty-four years in "the game;" twenty-two of them with some form of certification or license. I told someone else in the game I was into the developmentalists. She said, "Read this."

There are good books, great books, and life changers. For me, TIWOTI is somewhere between the latter categories. (I'd give it =six= stars if I could.)

Stern not only effectively built a case for a very solid, neo-neo-Freudian nosology of very early life development, he ties it all together with what it needs to be tied up =to=: the clinical implications for those who will deal with the results... of the pre-cognitive core self, of a new way of looking at attachment, of maternal attunement, of purposeful consciousness, of agency, of the formation of the verbal symbolic -- and thus =cognitive= -- self.

His notion of the "observed" -- as opposed to "theoretical" -- infant could only have been devised in the new era of computer-facilitated, empirical research that had dawned in the decade preceding the first edition (1985). He makes no assertions without grounding them in statistics.

For those of us who thought we had it all "down" with the great Erik Erikson, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein, Don Winnicott and Diana Baumrind, this will come as a real eye-opener. Because Stern can =see= into the developing mind by virtue of a rigorous means of empirical observation.

Many (though by no means all) of the pure Freudian and British Object Relations theories fall like flies before a can of Flit. Here =is= the platform Terry Brazelton, Alan Schore and my cross-town colleague David Seigel had to climb up upon to provide us with all the hugely valuable insights they have added since this book fell in their laps.

Stern argues for parallel and continuous, rather than discrete and staged, ego development. (His work greatly influenced my own about the continuous parallel processing of the seperate ego parts we can =observe= in the borderline personality organization.)

Stern presents us with a neonate and infant who is "working on himself" at every level that his continuing neurological maturation makes possible for him. No linear phases of "trust here" or "autonomy there" or "initiative over there" (though I continue to =observe= that these processes and acquitions influence each other). He and his associates and contributors see =all= of the supposed Erikson stages in process from the git in =cyclical= and interactive, rather than linear and stair-step fashion.

(Watch a five-month old =after= you've read this. It's all so self-evident, I wonder now how I missed it for so long.)

His notions about the socializing influence of maternal mis-attunement rooted in the mother's own socialized "false self" had such immense ramifications for those of us who deal with borderlines and other dissociatives that I had to put the book down and wander around for a half hour in a daze of inter-hemispheric computation on that =alone=.

"Gradually, with the cooperation between the parent and the child, the false self becomes established as a semantic construction made of linguistic propositions about who one is and what one does and experiences. The true self becomes a conglomerate of disavowed experiences of self which =cannot be linguistically encoded=."

If you studied -- and utilized -- the Big Ideas from the cognitivists like Beck, Ellis, Seligman, Wessler and Young; you'll grasp the clinical relevance of that quotation in three or four seconds... but you may wind up pondering it for a lot longer.

The paperback may weigh less than a pound, but it's impact needs to be measured in =tonnage=. This is one of the great, great books in our field.

This is an excellent book that outlines the infant to caregiver bond in human development. Dr. Stern challenges the traditional developmental sequence and the erroneous views that certain fundamental attachment patterns are confined to infancy alone. This is a great book that understands how scaffolding works in establishing patterns of relationship that can last a lifetime. The fundamental basics that make our human bonds to one another pleasurable and fulfilling are rooted in the establishment of secure attachments, trust and the creation of balance in human giving and receiving. He outlines what can go 'right' and what can go 'wrong' in these early bonds. His focus on loving and attuned presence, reading cues of overstimulation, or understimulation, captures the essence and joy that is both given and received when caretaking is done well or as has been described elsewhere, is 'good enough'. A great read and guide also for parents and clinicians, a great step in helping to build empathy and awareness about this critical period in human development. Highly recommended.

Dr. Stern did an excellent job in describing human development that is empirically based. What has resulted is a questioning of Dr. Margaret Mahler's 1st and 2nd stages of development. Though Dr. Mahler's work is superb, her theory is derived from observation, whereas Dr. Stern utilized computer technology to research similar material consequently presenting a major contribution to the literature. Finally, his writing style is easy to read that all readers can benefit from, especially those who have or work with children. I recommend reading this book.

This is a really wonderful book. It helps children to be prepared for the choices they will make when it comes to safety. Children love it too because they get to be involved by opening the pop up flaps. The wonderful illustrations also make the book complete. They include children of all different races which promotes diversity.

i just received my copy and i am thoroughly delighted. the aspect of having the child actually work with the book brings the book alive in a way that television or video simply cannot achieve. the child is actually involved in the physical book itself. and the illustrations are so very charming and the perfect compliment to the text. there is a gentleness to the artwork that brings to mind all that was wonderful about the late mr. rogers.
i highly recommend this book to all parents and children everywhere.
james lee stanley

i just received my copy and i am thoroughly delighted. the aspect of having the child actually work with the book brings the book alive in a way that television or video simply cannot achieve. the child is actually involved in the physical book itself. and the illustrations are so very charming and the perfect compliment to the text. there is a gentleness to the artwork that brings to mind all that was wonderful about the late mr. rogers.
i highly recommend this book to all parents and children everywhere.
james lee stanley

This book is excellent; not only for the professional that deals with children & legal cases involving children but also for anyone that needs to understand the reason why such professionals question children the way they do.

Speaking as a child abuse defense attorney, life would be much easier if social workers would learn the mistakes they can make resulting in false disclosures of child abuse. My job would be much easier if the results of these interviews were more reliable. This book shows how and why social workers need to use proper interview techniques. It's a great book from a defense attorney's standpoint to cross-examine a social worker with, but if every state mandated this book as training for social workers in the first place, we would have fewer cases in the system, and more reliable evidence.

I wish I had read this book the first day it came out. Very good protocols. Very effective strategies. Speaking as a law enforcement investigator assigned to these cases almost exclusively, there is not a better book I've found yet.