Sugar And Spice Aren't Everything Nice!

I am the only girl. I spent my childhood surrounded by, fighting with, fiercely loving, and learning about boys. I get spiders and appreciate dirt. I understand wrestling rather than talking and know how to catch a snake. To me, at some basic level, most boys make sense--the noise and rowdiness are part of the package. So, how did I end up the mother of three girls? They are foreign beings sometimes. Of course, I was a girl, which would seem to make me qualified to understand girls, but I realized after I got one that I hadn’t ever really spent time around any. My girls often mystify me and when I think I’ve got it, another one comes along! Of all the things I don’t know about them, I passionately understand what I want for them: to be happy, healthy women making authentic choices they believe are right. I think
Neil Gaiman gets me because his wonderful prayer-in-book-form Blueberry Girl is dedicated to “Tash, when she was only a bump and a due date.” In it he asks for protection and wisdom, courage and joy for girls
everywhere. Nick bought the book for Scarlett as a gift and today we read it. It is just what I would say to my daughters if I were a poet. “Words can be worrisome, people complex, motives and manners unclear. Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear…” Oh, Neil Gaiman, you had me at “words.”

http://www.neilgaiman.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Blueberry-Girl-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0060838086/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265785698&sr=8-1

Warning: Disaster Area

The girl who is now my middle daughter was the youngest for ten years. She is scrappy, wild and beautiful, deciding early on that this baby wasn’t going to be passed over, left behind or kept down. Where her older sister was patient and deliberate and her older brother was too active to stop very often and tear things up, Addison was a one-girl destruction derby laying waste to everything she touched--especially books, with their fragile paper pages and soft cardboard covers. Most books, indeed most things of all varieties, had to be put well out of reach and only handled under supervision if we ever wanted to see them again. So, Addie got her own sturdy reading material at ground level and a few lonely volumes have survived to tell the tale of being thrashed, bashed and scribbled upon. Her favorite was Barbara Emberley’s Drummer Hoff, where old-fashioned military folk, with rhyming names and duties, prepare to fire off a cannon. Every page is battered and ink-stained, attesting to its constant presence in the diaper bag and whatever purse Addie adopted that week. The outside edge has childish scrawl that says, “Addison. Kiys. Connor. Kalon lotion eans smaf.” Whatever that means. I feared that bringing home a new baby would be disastrous for all parties, but “Baby A” and “Baby B,” as Addie now calls herself and Scarlett, have always been comfortable with who they are to each other and themselves. And they both love the giant “KAHBAHBLOOM!” finale.





http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Barbara-Emberley/706365

http://www.amazon.com/Drummer-Hoff-Barbara-Emberley/dp/0671662481