A Mom 2 Mom reader sent me a question that I didn’t know how to answer. So I found an expert, Brenda Nixon, who’s written a book on how to deal with behavior in young children.

Question:

I’d really love to get your opinion about a situation we have with our 3- year old, if you wouldn’t mind. He is ALL BOY! I know that little boys have an aggressive energy about them by nature and they are more physical in their interaction, etc. However, I am having a hard time channeling his energy for the good and not getting frustrated with him. He is just being really aggressive with the other kids in his preschool class and with me at home. He is pushing, pinching, talking back to me, and his favorite is to just run into someone with the full force of his whole body. When I got pregnant with him I felt the Lord give me a specific word for him: “strong”. That has been true in every aspect of his personality since day one. I want him to keep his wonderful strength of heart and mind and body but I am running out of ideas as to how to help him have an obedient spirit. My family has anger issues in our past and I already see that coming out in him a little bit. I am just trying to get as much advice as I can so I don’t show him anger when administering discipline. I would love to know if you have any suggestions.

Here’s what Brenda says:

Often, 3-year olds are becoming more independent and have lots of energy. You are right in wanting to channel this to be expressed in positive, appropriate ways. If he is a first-born he’s probably a perfectionist and strong leader. Many of our U.S. presidents were first-born children.

To help your son, always make sure you’re a good role model. When you are excited or frustrated, keep calm. During discipline times, stay matter-of-fact and don’t scream at him. Remember, your son is watching YOU — his most influential teacher. You might say things like, “I feel frustrated. I’m going to exercise or take a bath.” This teaches your son two things: everyone has powerful emotions, and there are appropriate ways to exhaust them.

It’s admirable you want him to keep his strength of heart and mind and body, but being his first and most influential teacher, you must also teach him to respect others. Pushing, pinching, talking back, and running full force into someone in preschool might cause physical and mental anguish to the others so it cannot be tolerated. Talk with his teacher to come up with a mutual plan on how to end this aggression. He needs to learn appropriate ways to channel his feelings. Preschoolers need patience and persistent, calm correction.

At home, help his language development by reading lots of books. When children learn to use words they will express themselves with words rather than actions, like running into people. Check out books from your local library and make some of them on feelings. Kids love to be read to, so read a book to your son during neutral, non-aggressive, times when he’ll be more receptive to the lesson you’re trying to teach. All feelings come from God. There’s nothing wrong with feelings – only how we use them.

Since you say your family has anger issues in your past, then I might also suggest you see a family counselor for other behavior management techniques.

Brenda Nixon is a parenting speaker, columnist, and author of Parenting Power in the Early Years and Writers Who Speak.

Wow — I think no matter what age our children are, she’s given us some great ideas. Thanks for stopping in, Brenda!

Last week, I went to my first Christian Bookseller Association (CBA) conference — at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. It was also my first trip to the famed “Music City,” and I half-expected to see Stetson-clad cowboys two-steppin’ in the street. Instead, I mostly saw thousands of Christian books!

I badgered a few people to see if I could get a badge to attend — it’s one of those conferences where they have security at the door. CBA Advance is held every January and offers Christian publishers and wholesalers the chance to connect with retail buyers, authors, and editors to share products and ideas. There’s an even bigger CBA gathering held in July.

Before I left, I was secretly worrying about my budget — how many books would I be able to buy? When I’ve been to homeschool conferences, my credit card has burned a hole through my purse as I purchased curriculum and must-have educational products.

But this turned out to be different. Nothing was for sale! The booths displayed only floor samples for buyers. I felt like I was going on a treasure hunt every time I walked around the HUGE room. And there were authors I recognized everywhere! I had to stand and gawk at novelist Liz Curtis Higgs, my favorite humor columnist — she was signing her newest release. Her column appears on the last page of every Today’s Christian Woman issue — and she’s so funny.

Then I walked past Mary Hunt’s publisher — and there she was signing her two new financial management books. I’ve read her Everyday Cheapskate columns for ages — and here she was in person, smiling at me and giving me her books!

So, of course I’ll be reviewing many of them here for you. I’m almost halfway through Dennis Leonard’s Happiness Matters: 21 Thoughts that Could Change Your Life, and I love it — and can’t wait to tell you about it. (It came with a CD of some mighty fine preaching.) Michelle Medlock Adams and Gena Maselli signed their adorable book for women, Divine Secrets of the Yahweh Sisterhood, which looks like a fun read. I also picked up a copy of Story by Steven James, which is a passionate retelling of the real Easter story and will be sold in stores everywhere this spring.

One highlight was taking a swampboat tour with the author of The Wilderking Trilogy — which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow.

If you’ve never been to Opryland, here’s my sales pitch: it’s ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. I felt like I was in Hawaii — or on some remote South Pacific island. You’re inside this huge, 4.5-acre glass atrium, surrounded by real living plants — and you hear the swish and roar of waterfalls everywhere. The picture above is where my husband and I enjoyed our breakfast croissants and coffee in the morning. He could hardly get a bite to eat because I kept asking him to take more pictures — I love palm trees!

The best part of the conference for me was meeting the real people behind email names. A dozen of us from my online writers’ group met for a chat — and it encouraged me so much. Most of the writing work I do is very far from glamorous — I’m either up writing alone before dawn — or I’m composing while surrounded by kids, crayons, pets, sandwiches, laundry, the phone ringing, grocery lists, missing shoes, and stacks of magazines and books (which give me plenty to write about — but there’s not a pinch of glamour involved.)

So this was beyond refreshing for me — and hopefully, I’ll have plenty of new books and ideas to encourage and inspire you as well.

Living faith — that’s what I saw — the love of Christ demonstrated in thousands of ways.

Mind & Media is looking for some new book reviewers — so if you have a blog and you love Christian books, music, and movies, you may be interested in becoming a reviewer. In exchange for posting product reviews in your blog, you get to keep the items — free of charge.

Stacy just celebrated her one-year anniversary of starting her company, and her business is doing so well — she really needs more people to work on her team!

In the past week, I’ve been able to pick and choose from several newly released books. I chose two that specifically interest me. So, in a couple of weeks, I’ll open my mailbox (my real metal one), and these books will be waiting for me. All I have to do is read them and write a review.

The only requirements are that you need to post the above beautiful logo in your blog, and you post an Amazon ad of the books you review for two months. Also, your blog needs to have at least 1,000 unique visitors a month, and you must be approved based on the content in your blog. Stacy will check out every blog that requests to become a reviewer to make sure it’s a blog that edifies. She has a few more rules, which you can read about in the Become a Reviewer section of the Mind & Media site.

I hope you’ll give this some consideration because writing reviews of products is a great way to share the Good News of Christianity — whether your reviews are positive or negative. Good reviews can help promote books and spur sales, and critical reviews can give much-needed reader feedback to the author and publisher.

At any rate, I feel like I’m using my platform as a blogger to make a difference — all from the comfort of my home. At this season of life, I’m home raising young children, and I can’t get out and travel the world sharing the messages that I believe in (though I’d like to someday, when my kids are older and can travel with me!).

Here’s a verse I read recently that reminds me of my role as a writer/book reviewer:

“Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the spirit of his masters” Proverbs 25:13.

Note: FlyLady Friday will return next week — keep those timers ticking and sinks shining, fellow FlyBabies!

Last week, a friend emailed me and said she was trying to decide on a book for her Sunday School class to read together. She wanted to know if I had any ideas. Of course I do — I read a ton of great books!

Today, I’m writing some book reviews for Christian Book Previews, and I just realized I don’t think I’ve told you about this site yet.

If you hear about a new Christian book coming out, or you’re curious about something you’ve heard of, chances are you can find a review and even an author interview at this site. There are hundreds to choose from — and only the best books get picked for reviews.

Here are a few book reviews I’ve written — I highly recommend all of these books:

Little Lessons from a Big God, by Michelle Medlock Adams

Five-Star Families: Moving Yours From Good to Great, by Carol Kuykendall

The Marriage You’ve Always Wanted, by Gary Chapman

All in Good Time, by Debbie Williams

P.S. You can also sign up to receive a free newsletter — and if you love novels, there’s a Go Girl! Book Club that will keep you flipping pages in pure delight. (Just be sure you put your oven timer on if you’re baking while reading a novel — I speak from experience.)

Here’s a press release I just received and wanted to pass along to those of you who love books. (I’m not going to italicize all these titles because it didn’t come to me that way — and I don’t have time to make it look pretty.)

January 14, 2006 – The Board of the National Book Critics Circle today selected the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards for the publishing year 2005 in the categories of fiction, general nonfiction, biography, autobiography (new this year), criticism and poetry…The winners will be announced on March 3 at the organization’s 32nd annual awards ceremony.

At the ceremony, the NBCC will also present the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award to Bill Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Press in Wainscot, NY and editor of the annual Pushcart Prize anthology.

In addition, the NBCC will award its Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing to Wyatt Mason, a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker and The New Republic. The award, named after a longtime supporter of the organization and an editor at the New York Times Book Review, is presented annually to a member who has demonstrated the highest critical standards in his or her work. The other finalists were Allen Barra, Katherine A. Powers and Carlin Romano.

The National Book Critics Circle is the country’s leading organization of book critics and book review editors, with some 500 members. It was founded in 1974 to honor book criticism in all media, and to create a means for critics, reviewers and their editors to communicate with one another about their profession.

Last year’s NBCC winners were Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (fiction), Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation: A History (general nonfiction), Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s De Kooning: An American Master (biography/autobiography), Patrick Neate’s Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet (criticism), and Adrienne Rich’s The School Among the Ruins (poetry).

The finalists are:

Fiction:

E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)

Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)

Andrea Levy, Small Island (Picador)

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (Alfred A. Knopf)

William Vollmann, Europe Central (Viking)

General Nonfiction:

Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press)

Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Alfred A. Knopf)

Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild (Pantheon)

Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (Henry Holt)

Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War (Henry Holt)

Biography:

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Alfred A. Knopf)

Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf)

Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson (Continuum International)

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)

Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press)

Autobiography:

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf)

Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents (Penguin Press)

Judith Moore, Fat Girl: A True Story (Hudson Street Press)

Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (Alfred A. Knopf)

Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins)

Criticism:

Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-millennial South (Louisiana State Univ. Press)

Arthur Danto, Unnatural Wonders (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (Columbia University Press)

John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Alfred A. Knopf)

Eliot Weinberger, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles (New Directions)

Poetry:

Simon Armitage, The Shout (Harcourt)

Manuel Blas de Luna, Bent to the Earth (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press)

Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven (Alfred A. Knopf)

Richard Siken, Crush (Yale University Press)

Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books)

The biggest news right now in the book world is the controversy surrounding James Frey’s book, A Million Little Pieces. Are you keeping up with this? It’s interesting to me because it sets a precedent for publishers. Frey has been accused of embellishing facts (lying) in his bestselling memoir, which Oprah picked for her book club. Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly passed along:

Emotional, This Quest for Truth
It would be an understatement to say there is an abundance of stories on James Frey, his Larry King appearance last night, and Oprah’s dramatic last-minute blessing of the “emotional truth” of however it is that he told his tale. We presume that if you’re interested, there’s little new we can tell you, just as our subjective assumption is that you’ve probably already formed a firm opinion on the matter… The LAT editorial column is pretty clear on their position: “It’s hard to know which is worse: a writer who acts as though there is no distinction between a novel and a memoir, or a publisher who does not care.”
Oprah’s Board
Time: Prose and Cons
LAT editorial

I really liked the LAT opinion, if you have time to read it. Although I haven’t read Frey’s book and have no intention of doing so, this brings up the whole issue of what people expect from an author. I expect a made-up story in a novel and truth in a memoir.

Right now, I’m reading Mary DeMuth’s Building the Christian Family You Never Had, which is based on the story of her life. That’s what makes the book interesting — Mary reveals experiences from her past as a way of showing the reader how to heal and move forward with God’s help. This is a nonfiction book, and I trust that she’s telling the truth — in the same way that Frey’s readers trusted him.

Another bit of book news that caught my eye — what books are the most borrowed books from the library?

Top Fiction: Lifeguard by James Patterson and Andrew Gross (Little, Brown), The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking Adult), and 4th of July by James Patterson (Little, Brown).

Top Nonfiction: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (Anchor Books), Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Stephen J. Dubner (Morrow), and Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau (Alliance Publishing).

The nonfiction is what interests me. Readers are fascinated with other people’s lives, how to be financially successful, and health issues. I expect five years from now the top books will also cover these same subjects — using a fresh approach. Maybe you could write one based on your life experiences!

I read Elisabeth Elliot’s devotional today, “Some of My Best Friends are Books.” It is so wonderful — she stirs my soul! I don’t want to cut and paste the whole devotional since it’s under her copyright, but I’ll link to it and hope you can visit.

Here a few wonderful excerpts:

I have almost always been surrounded by books. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother put some in the crib along with my toys, just to get me used to them early. The first house I remember living in was one of those double ones of which there are hundreds in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We lived in Germantown, in what was probably a cramped house (although to me as a child it seemed large) and there were books in the living room, books in the dining room, books in all of the bedrooms and tall bookcases lining the halls. My father came home at night with a briefcase full of papers and books.

No wonder she grew up to be a writer who changed the hearts of thousands of people with her words!

Evenings at home were often spent with the whole family sitting together, each with his head in a book. Or at times my father would read aloud…A big dictionary was always within reach of the dining room table because it was there that arguments most frequently arose over words. He wanted them quickly settled, and made us look up the words in question…

But of course there was the Bible, in a class all by itself. This was The Book in our home, and we heard it read every day, usually twice a day. The King James English was as simple and familiar to me, with all its “beholds” and “it came to passes,” as Philadelphia talk (pronounced twawk). The resonance of the Books of Moses, the cadences of the Psalms, the lucidity of the Gospel of John, the soaring rhapsodies of Paul on the love of God, the strange figures of the Book of the Revelation, all sank deeply into my heart and mind. Everything in life, I believed, had meaning as it related to what I knew of The Book.

She ends her essay by writing, “Kafka said that books should serve as ‘the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ As a Christian reader I bring to bear on the book I am reading the light of my faith.”

P.S. You’ll notice I’ve added Elisabeth Elliot to my Blogroll of Favorites — so I can remember to read her every day.

If you’re a blogger or a blog reader, chances are you’re also zealous about reading books — am I right?

Me too. The main reason I started my blog was to give me an outlet for telling people about great books I read. I’ve always been passionate about reading — but early this year it dawned on me that authors really appreciate it when you write reviews of their books.

I mean, think about it. If you read a book and tell a few people you LOVE it, then put it back on your bookshelf (or return it to the library), does that help the author? A little. But if you read a book and review it online at a site like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or CBD, then you’re telling thousands of potential readers as well as the author how much you love the book!

I’ve reviewed dozens of books on Amazon — it’s so easy, and you can “self-publish” immediately. After I wrote about 20 reviews, I decided it might be high time for me to actually LEARN how to be a reviewer and see if there were any publications that might pay for reviews. That’s when I discovered The National Book Critics Circle.

I applied to become a member by sending them a resume and some clips of my reviews. Somehow, they accepted my application — and sent me a really thick packet containing the names of editors and publications that accept and even pay book reviewers. As a member, I also receive a nice newsletter, and I dream of someday attending one of their meetings in New York City. (It’s fun to think about!)

Yesterday was the deadline for all NBCC members to send in our nominations for the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award — recognizing a person or organization for long-standing achievement in the world of books. Ooh…I nominated the perfect person for that. I hope she wins. (I plan to blog about her organization one of these days. She’s passionate about promoting wholesome children’s books!)

But now I need your help. Members can nominate up to five books for the prestigious NBCC Book Awards. Finalists will be chosen by the board of directors in these categories: fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography/memoir, criticism and poetry. Last year, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson won in the fiction category (and it also won the Pulitzer Prize.)

Do you have any favorite books you’d like to see win an award? Tell me why you liked that book — I want to know! You can send me a private email — but I’d love it even more if you wrote to me in my comments so other readers could learn about some great books. (Don’t be bashful — if you’re an author, tell us why you’re passionate about your book!)

My nominations have to be sent in by January 6, 2006. So you’ve got nearly a week to let me know. I already have a few ideas — it will be hard to limit to only 5! But since I mostly read nonfiction, I definitely need your input for the other categories. (Any book published this calendar year is eligible.)

Here’s a chance to let your voice be heard!

Speaking of favorite books, my post about the Top 25 Books You’d Take to a Deserted Island still ranks as one of my most read. And here’s a list of a homeschooling dad’s Top 100-something books. Do you get the Kidsread newsletter? I skim it every month to see what’s out there. Here’s their list of the Best Books for 2005. I think they should have added Jonathan Rogers’ Wilderking trilogy (Book 2 came out this year, The Secret of the Swamp King.) And Book 1 of R.K. Mortenson’s Landon Snow trilogy — Landon Snow and the Auctor’s Riddle.

Now it’s your turn…

I read this in the Fly Lady Digest a couple of days ago:

In October, Joan [a reader] and her husband had to deal with a fire in their home. It was tough on them. Through all of this she developed a great surprise for our members. This past summer Joan asked you all to send in a list of the 25 books you would like with you if you were stranded on a desert island. We supplied her with hundreds of lists.

I went to Joan’s site and found she’s compiled over 300 lists sent in by Fly Lady readers, narrowing it down to the Top 25 Books For a Deserted Island. I thought this list might help you out if you’re doing some Christmas shopping this weekend:

1. The Bible

2. Tied for 2nd place!
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter series

3. Tied for 3rd place!
Jane Austen’s books
Mark Twain’s books
Shakespeare’s plays
The Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

4. The next tier of books, in no particular order, includes:
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Anne of Green Gables (Children’s Classics), by L.M. Montgomery
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Books by Charles Dickens (The Complete Works of Charles Dickens)
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Books by John Irving, esp. The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany

5. The third tier of books, also in no particular order:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Books by Roald Dahl (Roald Dahl Gift Set)
Winnie-the-Pooh, plus others by A.A. Milne
The Poetry of Robert Frost
The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?, by Rick Warren
Charlotte’s Web (Trophy Newbery), by E.B. White
Poisonwood Bible; Prodigal Summer, etc., by Barbara Kingsolver
James Herriot’s books, beginning with All Creatures Great and Small
The Secret Garden, etc. by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Hearty also-rans, with a great many votes, include:
John Steinbeck’s novels (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Winter of Our Discontent)
Agatha Christie’s mysteries (Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None (Mystery Masters)v, After the Funeral )
Willa Cather’s novels Great Short Works of Willa Cather (My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, O Pioneers! )
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The Once and Future King, by T. H. White
Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Anything by Rudyard Kipling
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by A. C. Doyle

–and many poets’ work, including Emily Dickenson, Edgar Allen Poe (short stories and poetry), Longfellow, and Tennyson.

Thanks, Joan! Her loss of books in the fire was tragic, but she’s brought blessings to us all by taking the time to compile this list. There’s plenty more to see and do on her site for those of us who love books!

So this got me thinking, What would I like to read if I were stuck on a deserted island? Let’s say I could only pick three books. Well, the first one would be the Bible. And I’m not just saying that because it sounds good. One of my life goals is to read it through every year in a different version. This year I’m reading The One Year Bible in the New Living Translation (NLT).

The second book? Well, if I were on a deserted island, I’d like to have The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, this one volume I had in college. It would be fun to act out the different parts. Especially if I were with my family or a few other people — we could pass the time waiting for our rescue by putting on plays for each other. I’m not much of an actress, but my mom is. So I guess it’s in my genes. (Mom, do NOT get any ideas…I’d do this on a deserted island, but not in front of a real audience!)

When I taught high school seniors, we studied Taming of the Shrew, and I had them read it out loud in class. We also watched Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton go at it in the film version. And Hamlet. Oh, I love Hamlet. We also read it out loud in class and watched the film version with Mel Gibson. (Didn’t mind that at all.)

Third book — I’d like to take A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. We read these poems out loud when we homeschooled using the Sonlight Curriculum. All of my kids memorized this one, and recite it when they swing:

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside —

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown —
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down.

How about you? What three books would you take if you were stranded on a deserted island? Now, there’s a good dinner party question for you to ask someone tonight. Don’t forget to tell me about it!

P.S. Here’s a must-read article in USA Today 12/2/05: Is That Lion the King of Kings? All about Aslan, Narnia, the movie — and an awesome quote: “With Lewis, the story is the thing. You ought to read the lines first. Then you can read between them” (Bruce Edwards).

Quick — check your bookshelf and tell me how many Berenstain Bears books you can find. We’ve got at least a dozen. They’re the ones my kids always circled in the book catalogs when they were preschoolers. Those thin paperbacks with bright colorful pictures of the Bear family. We could always relate to the stories.

I read today that Stan Berenstain died in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at the age of 82. Along with his wife Jan and later his two sons, he published over 200 Berenstain Bears books. His legacy is millions of children who have learned to read from his simple storybooks. The Berenstains dealt with many of those tough issues of childhood: starting school, going to the doctor or dentist, fighting over toys, messy rooms — and my personal favorite: Too Much Birthday.

I like his books because they bring up good family discussions — and they’re also short enough to read at bedtime when I can hardly keep my eyes open.

What I didn’t know until I read this article on the AP Wire from the Philly News is that Stan and his wife Jan met in art school in 1941 and used to draw weekly cartoons for magazines. They were encouraged by none other than the legendary Theodore Giesel (Dr. Seuss) to start writing for children. Giesel was then an editor at Random House. And the rest, as they say, is history.

An article on Boston.com says this:

Despite changes in society in the last four decades, little has changed in “Bears Country.”

“Kids still tell fibs and they mess up their rooms and they still throw tantrums in the supermarket,” Stan Berenstain told The Associated Press in 2002. “Nobody gets shot. No violence. There are problems, but they’re the kind of typical family problems everyone goes through.”

I read on the official website that the Berenstains just released an autobiography, Down a Sunny Dirt Road, published by Random House. You can read an excerpt from the book here. How wonderful that the couple took the time to write an autobiography to record their personal journey toward becoming best-loved book authors.

Mr. Berenstain will surely be missed around the world.