A memoir written by a Holocaust survivor. Nelly Toll and her mother survived the war by hiding in the bedroom of a Gentile family. They endured the hardships of the ghetto, betrayal by those close to them, and the loss of Nelly’s brother, father and most of her extended family.

Toll’s memoir is based on a diary that she kept while in hiding. While there are some periods about which she remembers little, her experiences are remarkably well documented. Her memoir is illustrated by watercolor pictures which she herself painted during the war as an escape from the terror she felt each day.

This is a very practical book that provides solid advice for parents. Smalley uses numerous examples from his own experience as a dad to illustrate concepts such as: The major destroyer of families, using contracts and motivating your children. I will definitely be rereading this book as my son gets older.

I eagerly dove into this book expecting some magical answers to my tedious toddler troubles. How do I keep my son from: throwing food on the floor, running away when I call him, banging on the TV cabinet, playing with the computer keyboard, darting towards the street when I’ve just told him to stay by mommy. . . You get the idea. Apparently there are no easy magical solutions to these problems. Apparently I just have to stay consistent and stay persistent (my summary of Ezzo’s philosophy.) Speaking of tedious! Of course, I know there aren’t usually magical shortcuts to parenting, but I can still dream, right?

On Becoming Babywise still remains the most important book that I read to prepare me for the practical side of parenting a newborn. While I didn’t follow the book religiously, it was the only book that gave me a step-by-step plan to deal with this new creature called a baby. I’m the type of person that feels much better with a step-by-step plan. (A word of warning about Babywise though. Don’t read it too early into your pregnancy. The amount of work involved in caring for a newborn will just freak you out. Wait til the 8th month when you are just ready to get that baby out, no matter how much work it will be.) Toddlerwise, while giving some good advice on scheduling and discipline, wasn’t as earth-shattering for me. It’s probably because I’ve adopted many of the Babywise principles and have automatically been using them already. In summary, while Toddlerwise has some good things to say about caring for your toddler, I wouldn’t consider it a must-read. Does anyone have a great toddler-parenting book to recommend?

The Scribe is the fifth book in Rivers’ Sons of Encouragement series. It tells the fictional story of Silas. I think that I enjoyed this book the least of all the books in this series. We know so little about Silas’ life that this book seemed extremely speculative. Other fictionalized accounts by Rivers (of Aaron, Caleb, Amos, and Jonathan) were much more grounded in Biblical fact because there is simply more written in the Bible about these men.