The Perfect Baby Blog

Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The legend of the demonic, incompetent babysitter

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

If you’d somehow failed to notice that babysitters have a bad rep, this Salon.com interview with Miriam Forman-Brunell about her new social history, Babysitter: An American History, is a splendid reminder. Forman-Brunell is a woman who has clearly spent days watching and re-watching When a Stranger Calls, the 1979 horror movie that she says represents […]

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New York Times food critic comes out as a “baby bulimic”

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Or, more precisely, a “toddler bulimic.” In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, esteemed restaurant critic Frank Bruni confesses, extensively and juicily that, from an early age, he was an insanely motivated eater. And a violently needy one. By Bruni’s account, adapted from his forthcoming memoir Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, […]

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Admirably imperfect mom of the week: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

It’d hard to be funny when you’re hanging out with tiny people who see no compelling reason to avoid gaping pits, ravenous dingoes, speeding Camaros, and large houses made of gingerbread. The parenting experience more typically facilitates freaking out, not the writing of a bestselling humor book. So when someone like the truly hilarious Stefanie […]

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The fate of Paris Michael Jackson—according to the world’s meanest astrologer

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

So I just discovered that Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, was born on April 3. The good news: So was I; it’s a really nice birthday. The bad news: Someday, Paris is going to read about herself in The Secret Language of Birthdays, this infamously rude, famously “accurate,” best-selling astrology book—and find out that she’s “demanding, […]

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“The Best Kids’ Books Ever”—as chosen, in a willy-nilly manner, by Nicholas D. Kristof

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Want to scare parents? Claim that their children’s brains start disintegrating every July, unless the kids are pried away from computers, televisions—and (presumably) diving boards and climb-able trees—and forced to read the 13 children’s books that New York Times’ op-ed columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, vaguely remembers from his boyhood, or has read to his own […]

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