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.
Now that I’m a mom, I know the most painful part isn’t getting something giant through your hooha. It’s having a real live child. If you are the kind of mom who shapes your kiddo’s organic quinoa into reproductions of the Mona Lisa, do not read this book. If you stayed up past midnight to create posters for your PTO presidential campaign, do not read this book. If you look down your nose at parents who have Domino’s pizza on speed dial, do not read this book. But if you are the kind of parent who accidentally goes ballistic on your rugrats every morning because they won’t put their shoes on and then you feel super guilty about it all day so you take them to McDonald’s for a special treat but really it’s because you opened up your freezer and panicked because you forgot to buy more frozen pizzas, then absolutely read this book. I Want My Epidural Back is a celebration of mediocre parents and how awesome they are and how their kids love them just as much as children with perfect parents. Karen Alpert’s honest but hilarious observations, stories, quips and pictures will have you nodding your head and peeing in your pants. Or on the toilet if you’re smart and read it there.
Do you ever feel like you’re failing miserably at parenting? Do your kids keep acting like douchenuggets no matter what you do? Then this book is for you. From the creator of Baby Sideburns and I Heart My Little A-Holes (and the creator of two kids who once were little a-holes but are slowly turning into awesome human beings), Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be A-Holes is a hilariously honest parenting guide written by a regular mom who doesn’t always know WTF she’s doing. Just like you. Featuring side-splittingly funny pictures, stories, and chapters like: You Are Not Your Kiddo's Servant Picasso's Mom Didn't Tell Him to Draw the Eyes in the Right Place Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones But Words Will Cost Thousands in Therapy If They Say "I Hate You," Then You're Probably Doing It Right Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be A-Holes will make you laugh, cry, laugh until you cry, and feel like you’re having coffee (and a little sumpin' in it) with a best friend who has some of the answers to THE hardest job on earth: parenting. And maybe, just maybe, it might help you get the a-hole out of your kids* *not a guarantee
From the creator of the popular blog Mommy Shorts comes a “hilarious and comforting” look at real-world motherhood (New York Times bestselling author, Jill Smokler). Ilana Wiles is not a particularly good mother. She’s not a particularly bad mother either. Like most of us, she’s somewhere in between. And she has some surprisingly good advice about navigating life as an imperfect parent. In this witty and loving homage to the every-parent, Wiles suggests that they having the best child-rearing experience of all. Using Wiles’s signature infographics and photographs to illustrate her personal and hilarious essays on motherhood, The Mommy Shorts Guide to Remarkably Average Parenting is an honest book that celebrates the fun of being a mom.
Toddler a**holery is a normal part of human development—not unlike puberty, except this stage involves throwing food on the floor and taking swings at people who pay your way in life. For parents of toddlers, it's a "you better laugh so you don't cry" period. Bunmi Laditan's hilarious, satirical guide to toddlerhood offers parents instant (and very welcome) comic relief—along with the very good news that "It's Not Your Fault." Chapters cover the cost of raising a toddler, feeding your toddler, potty-training, tantrums, how to manage the holidays, and "how not to die inside." Parents will see themselves in the very funny sections on taking your toddler to restaurants ("One parent will spend their time walking your toddler around the restaurant and outside like a cocker spaniel, while the other, luckier parent will eat alone."), Things You Thought You'd Never Say That You Now Say As a Parent of a Toddler ("I can tell you're pooping because your eyes are watering."), and how to order pizza ("Spend $40 on pizza delivery. Listen to your toddler cry for 30 minutes about how the pizza is all wrong. Watch your toddler take a small bite of crust. Google 'can anger give you a heart attack?' Start the bedtime routine."). Laditan's wildly funny voice has attracted hundreds of thousands of fans of Honest Toddler on social media; here she speaks parent-to-tired-parent, easing the pains and challenges of raising toddlers with a hefty dose of adult humor and wit.
A stunning novel about the transformative power of love, perfect for fans of 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness. There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution—Roman, a teenage boy who’s haunted by a family tragedy, is looking for a partner. Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together.
Armpit and X-Ray are living in Austin, Texas. It is three years since they left the confines of Camp Green Lake Detention Centre and Armpit is taking small steps to turn his life around. He is working for a landscape gardener because he is good at digging holes, he is going to school and he is enjoying his first proper romance, but is he going to be able to stay out of trouble when there is so much building up against him? In this exciting novel, Armpit is joined by many vibrant new characters, and is learning what it takes to stay on course, and that doing the right thing is never the wrong choice.
“The parenting genre is never going to be the same” (Jancee Dunn, author of How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids) after this candid and hilarious collection of essays on motherhood from the award-winning television comedy writer and producer of 2 Broke Girls and The King of Queens, who swears she loves her kids—when she’s not hiding from them. Some women feel that motherhood is a calling and their purpose on earth. They somehow manage to make pregnancy look effortless, bring out the beauty in a screaming child, and keep the back seat of their cars as spotless as their kitchens. And then there are women like Liz Astrof—who originally had children because “everyone else was.” In this blunt and side-splittingly funny book of essays (previously published as Don’t Wait Up), Liz Astrof embraces the realities of motherhood (and womanhood) that no one ever talks about: like needing to hide from your kids in your closet, your car, or a yoga class on the other side of town, letting them eat candy for dinner because you just can’t deal, to the sheer terror of failing them or at the very least losing them in a mall. And sometimes, many times, wondering if the whole parenting thing wasn’t for you. Perfect for fans of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and I Heart My Little A-Holes, Stay-At-Work Mom is a soul-baring and honest look at parenting and relationships for moms who realize that motherhood doesn’t have to be your entire life—just an amazing part of it.
The all-time classic picture book, from generation to generation, sold somewhere in the world every 30 seconds! Have you shared it with a child or grandchild in your life? For the first time, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is now available in e-book format, perfect for storytime anywhere. As an added bonus, it includes read-aloud audio of Eric Carle reading his classic story. This fine audio production pairs perfectly with the classic story, and it makes for a fantastic new way to encounter this famous, famished caterpillar.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
