Crap at My Parents' House


Book Description

An illustrated celebration of the trinkets and tchotchkes that accumulate over a lifetime—and turn ordinary family homes into weird museums . . . Deer-hoof bottle openers. Grizzly bear toilet paper holders. A copy of Sports Illustrated from 1983 with Hulk Hogan on the cover. You never know what you might find lurking at your parents’ house. Standup comic and blogger Joel Dovev has made it his personal quest to compile a catalog of the useless, tacky, and utterly bizarre items that moms and dads not only acquire in the first place, but refuse to throw out, all for reasons unbeknownst to their kids. If you’ve ever helped with cleaning and organizing efforts—or just opened up a junk drawer or a box in the basement during a visit home—you’re sure to recognize the feeling of stumbling across treasures such as these and asking yourself, “Why?” Packed with photos and humorous observations, Crap at My Parents’ House is a very special journey sure to provoke a mixture of tender nostalgia . . . and head-shaking bafflement.




Oh Crap! Potty Training


Book Description

From potty-training expert and social worker Jamie Glowacki, who’s already helped over half a million families successfully toilet train their preschoolers, comes a newly revised and updated guide that’s “straight-up, parent-tested, and funny to boot” (Amber Dusick, author of Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures). Worried about potty training? Let Jamie Glowacki, potty-training expert, show you how it’s done. Her six-step, proven process to get your toddler out of diapers and onto the toilet has already worked for tens of thousands of kids and their parents. Here’s the good news: your child is probably ready to be potty trained EARLIER than you think (ideally, between 20–30 months), and it can be done FASTER than you expect (most kids get the basics in a few days—but Jamie’s got you covered even if it takes a little longer). If you’ve ever said to yourself: -How do I know if my kid is ready? -Why won’t my child poop in the potty? -How do I avoid “potty power struggles”? -How can I get their daycare provider on board? -My kid was doing so well—why is he regressing? -And what about nighttime?! Oh Crap! Potty Training can solve all of these (and other) common issues. This isn’t theory, you’re not bribing with candy, and there are no gimmicks. This is real-world, from-the-trenches potty training information—all the questions and all the answers you need to do it once and be done with diapers for good.




The House on Mango Street


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.




Figuring Shit Out


Book Description

"Your life isn't over." My dad says this. "I mean, YOUR life isn't over. Beyond the kids. You'll go on living, doing things. This isn't it." I know, I assure him. I have the kids. They need me. They're my life now. "OK," he replies, then grunts—more of a brief hum. He only hums when he thinks I'm full of shit. Shockingly single. Amy Biancolli's life went off script more dramatically than most after her husband of twenty years jumped off the roof of a parking garage. Left with three children, a three-story house, and a pile of knotty psychological complications, Amy realizes the flooding dishwasher, dead car battery, rapidly growing lawn, basement sump pump, and broken doorknob aren't going to fix themselves. She also realizes that "figuring shit out" means accepting the horrors that came her way, rolling with them, slogging through them, helping others through theirs, and working her way through life with love and laughter. Amy Biancolli is an author and journalist whose column appears in the Albany Times Union. Before that, Amy served as film critic for the Houston Chronicle where her reviews, published around the country, won her the 2007 Comment and Criticism Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Biancolli is the author of House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts, which earned her Albany Author of the Year. Amy lives in Albany, New York, with her three children.




Oh Crap, My Parents Are Old


Book Description

Oh Crap, My Parents Are Old By: MaryBeth Smith We all have, or will have, aging parents. But not all of us may know what to do when it happens. This book is a light-hearted and informative guide to helping care for aging parents. A quick, relatable read with some great resources and advice from someone who’s been-there-done-that, not a daunting professional. Hopefully by the end of this book, readers will know that they are not alone in this stage of life.




I Heart My Little A-Holes


Book Description

Following the success of Go the F**k to Sleep, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, and Ketchup Is a Vegetable, a collection of funny, warm, and charmingly profane tales from the frontlines of parenthood by the author of the popular Baby Sideburns blog. Once upon a time you and your partner had a perfect life: dinners out, weekend mornings cuddling in bed, brunch with friends. Then you gave birth to a poop machine (or two). Now, it's all about the pediatrician, breast pumps, princess dresses, and minivans. And discovering that your pride and joy is actually a little A-hole. When your son wakes you up at 3:00 A.M. because he wants to watch Caillou, he's an a-hole. When your daughter outlines every corner of your living room with a purple crayon, she's an a-hole. When your rug rats purposely paint the kitchen ceiling with their smoothies, they're a-holes. At times like these, it's only natural to want to kill them (or yourself). But it's against the law (and there's the suicide hotline). Plus, there's that whole loving them more than anything in the whole world thing. In I Heart My Little A-Holes, Karen Alpert shares hilarious stories, lists, and deep thoughts on the joys and horrors of raising children. Accompanied by cheery illustrations and photos I Heart My Little A-Holes will make you laugh so hard you'll wish you were wearing a diaper.




Crap


Book Description

Crap teaches which types of crap are useful (and which aren't), how to avoid crap when possible, deal with it when it can’t be avoided, and how you can flush it out of your life. You'll learn how to break the crap-cycle once and for all with quotes from noted crap-coping experts like Homer Simpson and Kurt Vonnegut, and even get a few little-known biological and scientific facts about--yeah, you guessed it--literal crap.




Trapped in the Mirror


Book Description

In this compelling book, Elan Golomb identifies the crux of the emotional and psychological problems of millions of adults. Simply put, the children of narcissist—offspring of parents whose interest always towered above the most basic needs of their sons and daughters—share a common belief: They believe they do not have the right to exist. The difficulties experienced by adult children of narcissists can manifest themselves in many ways: for examples, physical self-loathing that takes form of overeating, anorexia, or bulimia; a self-destructive streak that causes poor job performance and rocky personal relationships; or a struggle with the self that is perpetuated in the adult's interaction with his or her own children. These dilemmas are both common and correctable, Dr. Golomb tells us. With an empathic blend of scholarship and case studies, along with her own personal narrative of her fight for self, Dr. Golomb plumbs the depths of this problem, revealing its mysterious hold on the affairs of otherwise bright, aware, motivated, and worthy people. Trapped in the Mirror explores. the nature of the paralysis and lack of motivation so many adults feel stress and its role in exacerbating childhood wrongs why do many of our relationships seem to be "reruns" of the past how one's body image can be formed by faulty parenting how anger must be acknowledge to be overcome and, most important, how even the most traumatized self can be healed. Rooted in a profoundly humanist traditional approach, and suffused with the benefit of the latest knowledge about intrafamily relationships, Trapped in the Mirror offers more than the average self-help book; it is truly the first self-heal book for millions.




If I Ran the Zoo


Book Description

Gerald tells of the very unusual animals he would add to the zoo, if he were in charge.




The Third Parent


Book Description

No one knows where he came from. No one knows what he wants. No one dares ask about his strange physical abnormalities. For a quiet suburban neighborhood, things are about to change. And it starts with a knock at the door. Follow his rules. Don't call the police. Listen to his lessons. That's what Jack and his family were told. Held captive in their own house, they must face a growing storm of mental and physical trauma as they try to just stay alive. But even if Jack can survive the horror of his childhood, will his tormentor ever leave him alone? And who is he really? Who is Tommy Taffy?