It’s always exciting to share news of a brand-spanking new LGBT-inclusive children’s book, especially one as good as Monday is One Day, by Arthur Levine, the U.S. editor of Harry Potter—and I have three copies to give away this week!
First, so you know why you might want to win a copy, here are some highlights from the full review I did for my latest newspaper column. (You can read the whole thing over at Bay Windows—along with a review of chef and lesbian mom Cat Cora’s new book, A Suitcase Surprise for Mommy—or just wait till I post it here in a few days.)
Monday Is One Day is a gay-inclusive (but not exclusive) poem from a working parent to a child. “The hardest part of going to work is being apart from you,” it begins. “Let’s count the days till we’re both at home with a special thing to do.” Each page then shows a different family and a different activity—splashing in puddles, playing with dinosaurs, enjoying cuddles—as they name the days of the week and count down to and through the weekend.
The families are white and black, with moms and dads, gay dads, single parents, and one older couple who could be the child’s grandparents. They live in cities, suburbs, and on a farm, and all delight in each other.
Levine, a gay dad himself, has been a children’s book editor for 25 years, and has authored seven books of his own, although this is his first in 15 years. He is also a vice-president of Scholastic Inc. and publisher of his own imprint there, Arthur A. Levine Books. You may have heard of a few of its titles—they involve some kid named Harry Potter, for whom Levine is the American editor.
Levine has also penned an open letter to readers, which is indeed worth a read. He describes the experiences with his own son that led him to write the book.
Also, very cool news: Levine notes on his Web site that Sarah Brannen, author of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about two anthropomorphic gay guinea pigs and their young niece, will be illustrating his picture book Tooth Trooth “to be published in a few years” by Scholastic Press. No word yet on whether it will contain any LGBT families, anthropomorphic teeth, or gay dentists.
You can buy Monday Is One Day at the Scholastic site, Amazon, or other major online (and offline) bookstores. But first, you can enter for a chance to win a copy here. I’ll be giving away one book today, one tomorrow, and one Friday.
Just leave a comment on this post with some thought or question about balancing work (in-home or out) and parenthood, and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive a free copy of Monday Is One Day. Comments must be left before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, Wednesday, April 13, 2011. (That’s 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time, April 14.)
Further rules and restrictions after the jump.
Additional rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Spam comments, including off-topic or commercial comments, will not count. If you win any one of the three drawings for this book, you cannot play again. (You can leave a comment to participate in the discussion, but I won’t enter you in the drawing.) If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.
You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. I will then share the winner’s name and postal address with the publicist, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize directly.
I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.
This sounds super. I am a nurse and work every weekend and Monday. The worst part of my job is leaving my kid at home when he is sick to go take care of other sick people. I usually hesitate to buy books about family situations because they so rarely include any type of family outside the traditional. Hurrah for a book that includes our family too.
I’m excited for this book, as my partner and I are expecting our first child in July. In addition to being a new mom, I will also be a full-time student, have a full-time job, and will be (potentially) running a campaign for elected office in 2012. So I will be one busy Momma!
Thanks for the site, and for all the resources you provide. It’s been immeasurably helpful for us as we prepare for this new adventure. :-)
I am always looking for good books that include gay, straight, and other non-traditional family structures. This book sounds wonderful, and I can’t wait to read it. Asside from honoring family diversity, it also gives a nod to all the families without a full-time caregiver. My three children (4, 2 & 2) always struggle on Monday mornings when, after a weekend of being together, it is time to get up out of bed and go to work/school/daycare. I’m always looking for ways to get my kids to look forward to good things instead of lamenting things they don’t like.
When I went back to work after a brief period of staying home, I was sad to not have that time with my kiddos…But, we soon found that I am a better mom when I work, and am SO excited to see my kiddos when we reunite everyday!
I think they might appreciate me & my wife more, too…whilst we are apart. ;) …or one can hope.
We get creative with the ways we balance our time. We have to. In all, I have about 2 1/2 hours a day during the week to spend with my 4 and 6 year old outside of school. My youngest, my daughter, actually attends the preschool that I teach in, so that helps, some. My partner, who has been a fixture in their lives for the last two years, is really settling into her role as “other mother” or “step-mom””, and has come to look forward to those bedtime snuggles, where she gets to devote half an hour at a time to each of our kids. My partner only works on the weekends, so she can be available to the kids, while I work the 9-5. It’s hard – grueling, at times – we lose a lot of sleep, and we don’t get a whole lot of “grown-up time”, but seeing the kids’ confidence and knowing that they’re secure in their attachments to us and independent makes it easier to get through the workweek.
Our daughter is 21 months old and I was at home with her for the first year. Now I work part-time, and my wife is a resident so she works… well… a lot. At the beginning of this year, day-care drop-offs were so wrenching that I had a lot of trouble focusing at work, but nowadays our daughter says cheerfully, “Mommy going work! See-ya-later!” and leaps out of my arms. As for Mama, she and our daughter miss each other a lot, which is hard on all of us. Talking and reading books about it seems genuinely to help. Most recently, our daughter has gone from insisting that all Mama does all day is “give shots” to saying she is “helping people” and “helping babies come out.” Not sure what it means to her, but it does seem to give her comfort.
My partner and I are moms to a happy 8-month old girl. One of our biggest struggles is my partner’s battle with the work/life balance. We’re both teachers so to do the job with integrity it takes a lot of time and emotional energy. So it’s hard to do that and come home with enough resources left for your own family. We’re figuring it out and our girl is always so joyful, we must be doing something right?
We have three little ones (6.5, 3.5, 10 months), and each year we seem to be re-negotiating the work/family balance, daycare, preschool, school, aftercare, etc. It’s never easy and is always a bummer to leave the kiddos, but I think at the end of the day we are better parents for the time that we DO have togther!! :)
Work-life balance – the fact that that phrase exists suggests that some people have managed it. I’m the stay at home mom in our family, and my partner works full-time. The difficulty during the week, is that I spend all of my time with our babe, from the moment she wakes, ’till she goes to bed, and my partner has 2-3 hours a day total to spend with our daughter. So we try to make sure that the hour between when she gets home, and the dinner-bath-bed rush starts, is time for just the two of them to play together while I cook dinner. This pretty much precludes any “three of us together” family fun time for 5 days out of 7. We do our best to make up for it by spending every baby-wakin’ moment of the weekend together.
Though I’m not currently a parent, I imagine that it would be important to not bring work home (if at all possible) or at a minimum, set some clear boundaries as to what time is work time, meaning the parent cannot give the child full attention, and what time is play time. I imagine that it is important to be present in the moment when playing with your child or spending quality time with him/her and not have your thoughts elsewhere (work!). Work hard when time to work, and play hard when playing. Oh, and never break a promise to a child. If you can’t keep it, don’t make it.
As my wife commented this morning, I’m a resident physician, and I do work a lot. It’s especially hard when I leave before our daughter wakes up and get home after she’s gone to bed. Since starting to talk, she’s found ways to tell me she’s angry at me about being away. But her talking also means we can have (limited) conversations where I tell her that I have to work but I love her a lot and will be home soon. Now that she’s willing to talk on the phone, I have the most hilarious voicemails ever (and my colleague with a ten-month-old is jealous!).
This looks great! My partner and I have a 3 1/2 year old son – we both work outside the home (and I work a lot of hours) and are continually struggling with our work/home balance (really how we’d like to work less and be home more – but alas, the rent needs to be paid…). We generally conclude there just aren’t enough hours in the day :)
I’m struggling with the issue of getting all my grading done (I’m a college professor). I made the decision to not take work home so my evenings can be devoted to my daughter and a little self-care before my own bedtime. But I used to take my grading home and do it evenings/weekends. I never realized before how my job really is more than a 40-hour workweek, and now that I’m trying to set boundaries and keep it to 40 hours, I’m struggling to get everything done!
We are fortunate because my partner is the cook at our son’s day care. We know he is in good hands and she gets to see him throughout the day. Other parents at the center tend to be surprised to find out that I’m the biological mom. I think it’s because they usually see her in the mom rule before they see me in it. But that’s a different topic.
Its hard leaving my son with other people, but leaving him in the care of others every day pushes us to have quality time with him when we are with him.
My partner and I have an awesome 4.5 yo little boy. Without any irony, the other day he asked when I’m going back to the hospital “where you live.” I was a little heartbroken. I work really intensely 7 days in a row and then have a few days off. During those intense weeks I try to get up as early as he does and have special time with him where we listen to music, dance around and make breakfast and lunch. Then we crawl back into into bed, snuggle for a few minutes and wake up my partner and then I’m out the door. It helps to get some time to be together at such a still time before we head into the big bustling world.
First, thank you for bringing this book to our attention, and for letting a few of us lucky folks get a copy for free!
I am in the throes of a shocking transition from self-employed, freelancing at-home primary caregiver to 3 days out of the home, 2 hr. commute each way, overfull-time job. Yak! So I have more words of woe than of wisdom. It is hard to be away. Very. But this past week I just plain pried myself from work earlier than I knew I could afford to leave, so’s to get home by dinner. Somehow, sitting at the table together made so much all right. So if I have to work even more hours in the evening to make it up, I’m going to try hard to insist on all of us at the dinner table.
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