I'm the mother of three children, ages 6, 3, and 1, and because I tend to write about what interests me, started to investigate the world of parenting when my eldest was born. (Prior to that, I was a food reporter and editor.) As my husband, a tech entrepreneur, kept bringing home pieces of technology that were supposed to make my life easier (spoiler alert: they rarely did), I found myself urgently trying to figure out what was best for my kids, and myself: the boring pile of blocks, or the flashy, sexy iPad? I spent years delving into the fields of neurobiology, psychology, philosophy, and pediatrics to get a better handle on these questions.
Alison Gopnik is a towering figure in the field of developmental psychology, and interviewing her at her Berkeley lab was one of the highlights of my reporting for my own book. She tackles parenting from a particularly erudite and academic angle, pulling on psychology, evolutionary biology, and more to persuade parents that parenting is, in fact—and in her words—“a mug’s game.” We may think we are carpenters, building a perfect specimen of child, but in fact the best way to raise resilient, successful kids is to act like a gardener, providing the right environment in which they can thrive. I found it to be a particularly calming message, and one that will resonate with anyone who agonizes over minute decisions.
In The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik, one of the world's leading child psychologists, illuminates the paradoxes of parenthood from a scientific perspective and shatters the myth of "good parenting".
Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call “parenting” is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion-dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult.
I am passionate about raising each human being for lifelong wellbeing and a full set of intelligences. High-income nations don’t do this so much anymore. I conduct empirical studies with children, parents, and other adults to examine how early experience affects capacities for getting along in life and with others. My book has won awards for its holistic view, integrating neuroscience, anthropology, and developmental science. This work led me to start the Evolved Nest website with lots of resources for parents and for all who care about human wellbeing. Humanity is facing many challenges and we need everyone’s gifts to be well grown to help us solve the problems we face.
I keep a pile of this book on my shelf to give away to new parents and grandparents. It is fun to flip through and see what catches your eye. It has lots of photos and diagrams that make it easy to understand. It has easy-to-read descriptions of young children’s needs in light of their brain development. It is the closest to outlining the evolved nest that young children need. And it is inexpensive!
It's time to re-write the rule book on raising a child. Based on over 700 scientific studies into children's development, BMA award-winning author and child psychotherapist Dr. Margot Sunderland explains how to develop your child's potential to the full. Find out the truth about popular childcare tactics, how touch, laughter and play build emotional wellbeing for life, and the strategies for effectively dealing with temper tantrums and tears. This is the first practical parenting book to give you the facts, not the fiction on the best way to bring up your child, essential for any parent.
The question “Who are you?” has been central to my practice over the last 30 years. This inquiry led me to live in a silent monastery for eight years. If we aren’t who we have been conditioned to see ourselves to be, then who are we? Who are we truly? This inquiry has led to happiness in my own life, it’s led to happiness in the lives of thousands of teens who have been served through the nonprofit I founded–Peace in Schools, and it’s led to happiness with the adults who have come to my workshops and retreats.
I found this book to be an invaluable resource for parenting. I love how Bertin translates complex scientific research into practical, actionable strategies that address everyday challenges. The book's focus on fostering resilience and happiness in children really resonated with me, providing clear, evidence-based practices that I can apply to support my child’s development.
I particularly appreciate the way Bertin makes scientific findings accessible and relevant, helping me feel more confident in my parenting choices. This book is essential for any parent or caregiver who wants to nurture a child's well-being with a grounded, research-backed approach
Discover the proven ways parents can help their children learn, overcome adversity, get along with others, and become independent-while you relax and enjoy being a parent
How do children thrive? As a parent, you probably think about this all the time. You want your children to have happy, healthy, and meaningful lives-but what's the best way to support them? In How Children Thrive, developmental pediatrician and parent Dr. Mark Bertin provides a positive, simple, and empowering approach for raising children of all ages. Bringing together mindfulness, new science on brain development, and the messy reality of being a parent, Dr.…
I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
I appreciate this small guide (with audio) is a simple accessible guide to bringing mindfulness into daily life for younger kids. It does not get bogged down in theory or explanations but gets right to the point with simple, fun practices that exhausted parents, and educators can share with their children and students.
Simple mindfulness practices to help your child (ages 5-12) deal with anxiety, improve concentration, and handle difficult emotions—with a 60-minute audio CD of guided exercises
Mindfulness—the quality of attention that combines full awareness with acceptance of each moment, just as it is—is gaining broad acceptance among mental health professionals as an adjunct to treatment. This little book is a very appealing introduction to mindfulness meditation for children and their parents. In a simple and accessible way, it describes what mindfulness is and how mindfulness-based practices can help children calm down, become more focused, fall asleep more easily, alleviate worry, manage…
Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, has spent over a half century working with and studying young children and creating numerous courses on how best to nurture early development. She has lectured widely in many countries and is the author of over 600 articles and chapters, and dozens of books on children and their caregivers. For nearly 40 summers she conducted an annual workshop “Quality caregiving for infants and toddlers”. As a licensed New York State psychologist, she has worked with families to ameliorate troubles in development and behavior. In Beijing, she was invited to give the “Dr. Alice Honig award” to a prominent Chinese pediatrician. She was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Academic Excellence.
Psychiatrist Dr., Greenspan illuminates in careful detail for parents six emotional milestones on an infant’s journey toward becoming a more self-regulated person with an organized sense of self. He provides positive and wise supports for parents to help each child along this pathway.
Greenspan outlines the six stages of emotional growth in early childhood and explores the ways in which they are communicated, emphasizing parental interaction as the key to a child's healthy, emotional maturation.
I’ve been drawing and writing ever since I could hold a pencil, and a big inspiration for me to start my lifelong creative journey were graphic novels. So even as an adult, I love to read work from a wide range of genres and age ranges to see what my fellow authors and artists are up to. Especially making my own middle grade graphic novel series, I look up to so many of the authors and artists on this list and chances are you and your kids will too if you pick one of these up!
To me, Twins is an instant middle grade classic. It explores the relationship between two twin girls who are starting to be interested in different things after having spent years being on the same exact page.
I love that this book shows how people can approach creativity and life in different ways, most notably through a school campaign the two twins find themselves running in against each other. I think it’s a good reminder that we’re always changing and evolving, and while it can be scary, it’s ultimately worth embracing those changes.
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authors picked
Twins
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why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10,
11, and
12.
What is this book about?
A heartfelt and delightful middle-grade graphic novel, from the award-winning author Varian Johnson and rising cartoonist Shannon Wright. Maureen and Francine Carter are twins and best friends. They participate in the same clubs, enjoy the same foods and are partners on all their school projects.
But just before the girls start sixth grade, Francine becomes Fran - a girl who wants to join the chorus, run for class president and dress in fashionable outfits that set her apart from Maureen. A girl who seems happy to share only two classes with her sister!
In 1972, I started an early childhood center in the Monadnock Region in New Hampshire. The focus was on child-centered education, with an emphasis on working with children outdoors. I've spent the last 50 years continuing to connect children with nature in schools, nature centers, national parks, museums, and in families. I taught graduate courses in developmental psychology, cognitive development, place-based education and have done hundreds of professional development workshops for early childhood and elementary school teachers. As a father, I focused on connecting my own children with nature. My son is a ski coach and runs an ecotourism kayaking business. My daughter is a theater director and writes grants for an environmental non-profit.
Joseph Pearce picked me up while I was hitchhiking when I was about 20 years old, and the intense conversation we had that day changed my life. Magical Childis a landmark book that questioned our conventional thinking about parenting, childbirth practices, and the value of bonding our children with the natural world. Pearce provides an alternative model of child development with an emphasis on the child bonding with the earth matrix between about six and twelve years old. This bonding allows children to feel at home, independent, and secure in the natural world. This book inspired a lot of what I describe of my parenting in my own book.
Magical Child, a classic work, profoundly questioned the current thinking on childbirth pratices, parenting, and educating our children. Now its daring ideas about how Western society is damaging our children, and how we can better nurture them and ourselves, ring truer than ever. From the very instant of birth, says Joseph Chilton Pearce, the human child has only one concern: to learn all that there is to learn about the world. This planet is the child's playground, and nothing should interfere with a child's play. Raised this way, the Magical Child is a happy genius, capable of anything, equipped to…
Erica Komisar is a licensed clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, and parent guidance expert who has been in private practice in New York City for over 30 years. A graduate of Georgetown and Columbia Universities and The New York Freudian Society, Ms. Komisar is a psychological consultant bringing parenting and work/life workshops to clinics, schools, corporations, and childcare settings. She is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Daily News. She is a Contributing Editor to The Institute For Family Studies and appears regularly on Fox and Friends and Fox 5 News.
The best book I know to understand the emotions of toddlers and how to help regulate those emotions. Fraiberg is brilliant at taking complicated psychoanalytic and attachment knowledge and putting it into a readable and accessible form to help everyone from clinicians to parents.
Children feel all their emotions, but I learned to suppress many emotions to avoidcriticism. The youngest, I learned to not trust my intuition. I was taught that the mind wasthe path to success. In my chosen medical profession, physicians use intellect to healbodies. The interconnection of thoughts, emotions, energy as well as interconnectionsbetween people and the environment are ignored.This separation from all of me was sapping me of the joy of living a full life.During my self healing integration journey: I uncovered limiting beliefs, reconnected withmy heart, and dove deep into the source of my pleasure. Bringing this awareness to lightshould be healing.
This book promotes diversity and inclusion. But beyond that, it reaffirms that we are all moresimilar than we are different.
We are all packaged uniquely but our desire to be accepted andloved for who we are is universal. And we are all worthy no matter how we are packaged. To behuman means we have a range of emotions. This is not a reason to judge another.
And we allhave our own thoughts – this too doesn't make us more or less likable – we can agree to disagree. And like my other book, it reminds us that humans are also similar toanimals and inanimate objects.
A #1 New York Times bestseller and Goodreads Choice Awards picture book winner! This is the perfect gift for mothers and daughters, baby showers, and graduation.
This gorgeous, lyrical ode to loving who you are, respecting others, and being kind to one another comes from Empire actor and activist Grace Byers and talented newcomer artist Keturah A. Bobo.
We are all here for a purpose. We are more than enough. We just need to believe it.
Plus don't miss I Believe I Can-the next beautiful picture celebrating self-esteem from Grace Byers and Keturah A. Bobo!
My passion is using field experiments to explore economic questions. Since the early 1990s I have generated more than 200 papers published in academic journals using the world as my lab. That’s what we do as academics. The problem is that locked away in these journals is an enormous amount of wisdom and insights that can not only help the realm of academia, but also change the world as we know it. The brilliant authors of these books unlock the ideas and knowledge found in the academic papers that are full of jargon and math, aimed towards a narrow audience, and put them in language aimed towards the masses where real change can be implemented.
Parents are the foundation of our society. However, too many parents do not receive the support they need to meet the needs of their children.
Dr. Dana Suskind, my incredible wife, combines the latest science on the key role of parents in the development of children’s brains with stories of the experience of parents left shouldering this vital responsibility. Leaving parents unsupported is detrimental not only to children and families, but also society.
This book is essential for all members of society to read in order to understand why and, importantly, how we must support parents. Parent Nation provides a blueprint for a more sustainable future.
***INSTANT New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestseller***
World-class pediatric surgeon, social scientist, and best-selling author of Thirty Million Words Dr. Dana Suskind returns with a revelatory new look at the neuroscience of early childhood development—and how it can guide us toward a future in which every child has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Her prescription for this more prosperous and equitable future, as clear as it is powerful, is more robust support for parents during the most critical years of their children’s development. In her poignant new book, Parent Nation, written with award-winning science writer…