As a parent of three children, I’ve read my share of parenting books. I started with the iconic What to Expect When You’re Expecting, moved into Dr. Sears’ Attachment Parenting series and lately, have explored books to support teenage development, parenting through a pandemic and navigating the college process, too.
But lately, I’ve found the best parenting books aren’t really parenting books at all. They’re parenting books disguised as other genres, particularly memoirs and middle grade novels.
Really.
Here’s a list of books that offer incredible parenting advice…but are not parenting books. You see, we can learn lessons from ALL the books we read, even those that come in unexpected places.
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Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable by Zain E. Asher
This is an absolutely beautiful, brilliantly written account of one family’s triumph through loss to an extraordinary life. Asher starts her family’s story with the heart-breaking loss of her father, shares her mother’s incredible strength and desire to see her children succeed while grappling with that loss and ends with her own story and the story still left to tell. I felt like I was reading this as multiple versions of myself: my younger self working so hard to be good at something, my current self trying to learn how to be a better parent and my future self hopefully looking back with pride on what my daughter would say about what I taught her, too. This is a parenting manifesto just as much as it is a memoir and I am absolutely taken with this book.
Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
In the ten years since the publication of her beloved, groundbreaking Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, #1 New York Times bestselling author Amy Krouse Rosenthal has been quietly tinkering away. Using her distinct blend of nonlinear narrative, wistful reflections, and insightful wit, she has created a modest but mighty new work.
Not exactly a memoir, not just a collection of observations, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal is an exploration into the many ways we are connected on this planet and speaks to the awe, bewilderment, and poignancy of being alive.
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden
Seventh-grader Zoey has her hands full as she takes care of her much younger siblings after school every day while her mom works her shift at the pizza parlor. Not that her mom seems to appreciate it. At least there’s Lenny, her mom’s boyfriend—they all get to live in his nice, clean trailer.
Zoey thinks how much easier everything would be if she were an octopus: eight arms to do eight things at once. Incredible camouflage ability and steady, unblinking vision. Powerful protective defenses.
This moving debut novel explores the cultural divides around class and the gun debate through the eyes of one girl, living on the edges of society, trying to find her way forward.
