Becoming the Parent You Want to Be: a Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years. Laura Davis & Janis Keyser, $25.95

One of our favourite books on parenting young children! Respectful, informative and inspiring, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be is full of practical insights into children and into our own journey as parents. This is a practical book that covers so much ground you'll want to read it many times over.

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. Wendy Mogel, $17.50

A practical and refreshing antidote to anxious over-parenting, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee is itself a blessing — pointing the way to raising self-reliant, compassionate and ethical children.

The Brightening Glance: Imagination and Childhood. Ellen Handler Spitz, $19.95

In this remarkable book, Ellen Handler Spitz shows how to promote children’s creative and emotional growth by making the most of the unlimited possibilities of everyday experiences. Through delightful anecdotes about real children and their treasures, bedrooms, play spaces, music, scary things, and birthday parties, The Brightening Glance will inspire you to create a life of wonder, inventiveness, and cultural enrichment for your child.

Calm and Compassionate Children: a Handbook. Susan Usha Dermond, $17.99

Building on such inherent qualities as open-heartedness and trust, parents and teachers can help children develop empathy and integrity as they grow. From nature walks to conscious quiet time to tips on daily routines, Calm and Compassionate Children provides practical guidance to help grown-ups model behavior and suggests ninety activities to foster children’s concentration, joy, kindness and love.

The Complete Buddhism for Mothers. Sarah Napthali, $25.95

Parenthood can be a time of great inner turmoil for a woman yet parenting books invariably focus on nurturing children rather than the mothers who struggle to raise them. Firmly grounded in the day-to-day reality of being a mother, THE COMPLETE BUDDHISM FOR MOTHERS gives personal and honest advice based on Buddhist teachings as applied to the everyday challenges of bringing up children.

Writing from personal experience, and weaving in stories from other mothers throughout her narrative, Sarah shows us how spiritual and mindful parenting can help all mothers to be more open and content. Even if exploring Buddhism at this busy stage of your life is not where you thought you'd be, it's well worth reading this book. It can make a difference.

The Confident Child: Raising Children to Believe in Themselves. Terri Apter, $20.00

Raising confident, motivated, and caring children is a parent’s greatest challenge. Drawing on her own extensive research on children and parents, Terri Apter has created a guide based on “emotional coaching”—learning to respond appropriately to a child’s feelings—that helps parents raise children to solve problems, to be socially active and understand others, and to manage emotions, all of which are crucial to developing confidence and functioning successfully in society. Hugely insightful, reassuring, and accessible, The Confident Child is a truly necessary parenting guide.

The Conscious Parent. Shefali Tsabary, $23.95

Turning the traditional notion of parenting on its head, Dr. Tsabary shifts the parent-child relationship away from the traditional parent-to-child “teaching” approach to a parent-with-child relationship that is mindful, conscious and mutually supportive.

The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. Amanda Soule, $23.00

With just the simple tools around you — your imagination, basic art supplies, household objects, and natural materials — you can transform your family life, and have so much more fun!

Perfect for all families, the wide range of projects presented here offers ideas for imaginative play, art and crafts, nature explorations, and family celebrations. This book embraces a whole new way of living that will engage your children’s imagination, celebrate their achievements, and help you to express love and gratitude for each other as a family.

Dinner with Dad: How One Man Braved Traffic, Battled Picky Eaters and Found His Way Back to the Family Table. Cameron Stracher, $16.50

Successful attorney Cameron Stracher has it all — and is never home to enjoy it. So he makes a bold decision — for the next year he will be home by 6:00 p.m. at least five days a week to sit down to a family dinner with his wife and kids, and he’ll share the cooking and shopping duties. What follows is a journey to the heart of what matters most.

E Is for Ethics: How to Talk to Kids About Morals, Values and What Matters Most. Ian James Corlett, $16.00

Teaching your children values, life skills, and ethics can be difficult for many parents.  These 26 simple, clear, original, stories for you to read aloud with your child are fun and entertaining tales that serve a deeper purpose — to teach tact, understanding, and responsibility.

Encouraging Your Child’s Spiritual Intelligence. Mollie Painton, $16.50

Parents will find guidance and inspiration in Encouraging your Child's Spiritual Intelligence. Dr. Painton's thoughtful quizzes and advice provide added support and insight throughout the book. Adults will rediscover their spiritual connections and become valuable spiritual partners with their children.

Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children without Going Nuts with Worry. Lenore Skenazy, $17.95

When Lenore Skenazy wrote a newspaper column about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway alone in New York City, little did she realize that the response would spark a national movement. Her outspoken, commonsense approach to parenting galvanized a huge wave of supporters—and a counterstorm of protest from others who dubbed her "America's Worst Mom."

In this funny, fed-up book, Lenore encourages parents to let their kids be kids. She's all for helmets and car seats but insists children do not need a security detail every time they go outside. Armed with stories, wisecracks, and a battery of facts, she gleefully punctures modern-day myths about rampant kidnapping, marauding germs, and poisoned Halloween candy. After exposing where these worries come from, she gives tips on how to break free.

The book reads like a conversation with your funniest, most honest friend. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud while shedding their fears. For anyone who remembers the days of walking to school, playing outside, or eating a kernel of unwrapped candy corn—and longs to bring them back to childhood—this book is a must-read.

A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age. Richard Layard & Judy Dunn, $25.00

A Good Childhood looks at the state of childhood today and provides striking and imaginative proposals for how it could be better for all children, giving them what they need to flourish.

Good Kids, Tough Choices: How Parents Can Help Their Children Do the Right Thing. Rushworth Kidder, $19.95

Parents are beginning to realize that deficiencies in ethics and character are becoming a big problem among our children. According to the latest data, lying, cheating, and rampant insensitivity to other people are increasingly common. What can parents do? In this book, ethics expert Rushworth Kidder shows how to customize interventions to a child's age and temperament. He encourages parents not to give up, since what they do can always make a difference, regardless of how long or deep the bad habits of dishonesty may be and explores the keys to ethical behavior: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion.

Healthy Mother, Healthy Child: Creating Whole Families from the Inside Out. Elizabeth Irvine, $21.95

ICU nurse, yoga instructor and mother Elizabeth Irvine offers practical tips and a positive philosophy that will help your entire family build physical and emotional health that will last a lifetime.

North Americans live in a remarkably diverse society, and it’s increasingly common to be invited to a wedding, funeral, or other religious service of a friend, relative, or coworker whose faith is different from our own. This indispensable guidebook to help the well-meaning guest to feel comfortable, enjoy participating to the fullest extent possible and avoid violating anyone’s religious principles — while enriching their own spiritual understanding.

How to Bury a Goldfish and Other Ceremonies and Celebrations for Everyday Life. Virginia Lang & Louise Nayer, $18.95

Featuring a host of celebration ideas, this remarkable guide addresses more conventional occasions, like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, family dinnertime and nighttime prayer, as well as more unique experiences, like a teen’s first job, a women’s midlife journey, and moving an elder into assisted living. Through the art of simple ritual and ceremony, How to Bury a Goldfish allows readers to slow down, sit in silence and savor all of the precious moments that enrich our daily lives.

In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness. Chris Mercogliano, $20.95

As co-director of the Albany Free School, Chris Mercogliano has had remarkable success in helping a diverse population of youngsters find their way in the world. He regrets, however, that most kids' lives are subject to some form of control from dawn until dusk. Lamenting risk-averse parents, over-structured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, Mercogliano argues that we are robbing our young people of that precious, irreplaceable period in their lives that nature has set aside for exploration and innocent discovery, leaving them ill-equipped to face adulthood. The ‘domestication of childhood’ squeezes the adventure out of kids' lives and threatens to smother the spark that animates each child with talents, dreams, and inclinations.

There is plenty that those involved with children can do to protect their spontaneity and exuberance. We can address their desperate thirst for knowledge, give them space to learn from their mistakes, and let them explore what their place in the adult world might be.

The Joy of Family Traditions: a Season-by-Season Companion to Celebrations, Holidays and Special Occasions. Jennifer Trainer Thompson, $20.00

The Joy of Family Traditions offers more than 400 fresh ideas and creative approaches to cultivating birthday, anniversary, holiday, and other rite-of-passage and seasonal traditions that strengthen personal bonds and reflect a family's individual style, spirituality, and values. This wonderful book:

• Inspires and instructs families on how to create, personalize, adapt, and preserve relevant traditions that reflect how we live today.
• Explores the historical, cultural, and often quirky origins of holidays, customs, and milestones, both uncommon and familiar.
• Includes holidays, holy days, annual events, once-in-a-lifetime occasions, and personal celebrations.

Just Because It Isn’t Wrong Doesn’t Make It Right: Teaching Kids To Think and Act Ethically. Barbara Coloroso, $22.00

In her now-classic ‘kids are worth it!’ Barbara Coloroso’s underlying parenting vision ascribed to parents the responsibility to teach the next generation how to think, not just what to think, so that they may grow into the best people they can be.

Now, in this groundbreaking new book—a natural extension and a profound deepening of her original vision—Coloroso shows parents how to nurture their children’s ethical lives, from preschool through adolescence.

There can be no more necessary book for our times.We live in a world where children are so often given the message that the ends justify the means; where harmful, even violent behavior—in families, in communities, and around the world—goes unnoticed, unmitigated, and often unrepented; where children’s ethical education can come from a T-shirt slogan or bumper sticker, an Internet site, or the evening news; where rigid moral absolutism or moral relativism has replaced true ethical thinking. In a world such as ours, Just Because It’s Not Wrong Doesn’t Make It Right is an essential tool.

Rich in advice and anecdotes, Barbara Coloroso offers no less than an ethical vision, one rooted in deep caring, by which we and succeeding generations may not only live, but thrive.

Kids Are Worth It: Raising Resilient, Responsible, Compassionate Kids, Revised 2010. Barbara Coloroso, $22.00

Barbara Coloroso delivers a powerful message that good parenting begins by treating kids with dignity and respect, giving them a sense of power in their own lives and offering them opportunities to make decisions, take responsibility for their actions and to learn from their mistakes. Rejecting the quick-fix solutions of punishment and rewards, Coloroso shows how to use the very stuff of family life to help you guide your children to become self-disciplined, responsible, resilient and compassionate human beings.

Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children. Rafe Esquith, $18.50

In Lighting Their Fires, educator Rafe Esquith shows that children aren’t born extraordinary; they become that way as a result of parents and teachers who instill values that serve them not just for school, but for the rest of their lives.

Whether he is highlighting the importance of time management or offering a step-by-step discussion of how children can become good decision makers, Esquith shows how parents can equip their kids with all the tools they need to find success and have fun in the process. Using examples from classic films and great books, he stresses the value of sacrifice, the importance of staying true to oneself, and the danger that television can pose to growing young minds. Lighting Their Fires explains not just how to make our children great students, but how to make them thoughtful and honorable people.

Little Big Minds: Teaching Philosophy to Kids. Marietta McCarty, $18.50

Children are no strangers to cruelty and courage, to love and to loss, and in this unique book teacher and educational consultant Marietta McCarty reveals that they are, in fact, natural philosophers … Little Big Minds guides parents and educators in introducing philosophy to K-8 children in order to develop their critical thinking, deepen their appreciation for others, and brace them for the philosophical quandaries that lurk in all of our lives, young or old. Arranged according to themes including prejudice, compassion, and death and featuring the work of philosophers from Plato and Socrates to the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr., this step-by-step guide to teaching kids how to think philosophically is full of excellent discussion questions, teaching tips, and group exercises.

Make Stuff Together: 24 Simple Projects to Create as a Family. Bernadette Noll & Kathie Sever, $23.99

Slow down, reconnect and get back to basics. One of the best ways for families to share experiences and meaningful time together is through crafting. This book invites you to look around your house you’re your neighbourhood to discover materials that are just waiting to find a new life.

Whether you’re a parent looking for innovative projects for your kids, or an advocate of the slow family movement, Make Stuff Together gives you 24 fun, versatile projects that help you build family connections while being creative and crafty.

Mending the Broken Bond: the 90-Day Answer to Repairing Your Relationship with Your Child. Frank Lawlis, $16.50

Mending the Broken Bond leads parents through a 90-day program of practical steps and action plans toward building—or rebuilding—a positive, loving, and healthy bond with their children. Whether parents are faced with toddlers throwing temper tantrums, ten-year-olds who prefer videogames to talking, or rebellious teenagers, Dr. Lawlis presents sound solutions to repair relationships and regain a meaningful and lasting connection with their children.

The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood around the World. Photography by Richard Steckel & Michele Steckel, $15.99 (Includes essays by J.K. Rowling, Cynthia Rylant, Eric Carle, and more)

A best friend. A lost tooth. A first day of school. In engaging photos and text, this book highlights the milestones shared by children everywhere.

In addition to original writings from some of today's best-known children's authors and illustrators The Milestones Project comes packaged with a growth chart uniquely designed to track a child's physical growth as well as their development into an ethical human being. Stickers included with the book can be placed on the chart to encourage children toward their goals: "I told the truth." "I kept a promise." "I shared my toys."

My Diary: the Totally True Story of Me! Gilles Tibo, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon, $13.95

This is the diary of a young girl. Here she shares all of her wishes, dreams, and secrets. She writes about who she likes, what makes her sad, what gives her joy, and what gives her courage.

Written especially for young girls, MY DIARY is filled with poems, illustrations, inventions, and personal musings on life and happiness. Parents and kids can read along and learn as this young girl explores her world and how she feels about her place in it.

No Contest: the Case against Competition, 20th Anniversary Edition. Alfie Kohn, $18.50

No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other — at work, at school, at play, and at home — turns all of us into losers.

Nurturing Spirituality in Children. Peggy Joy Jenkins, $17.50

The greatest gifts that a child can receive are an opened mind, a caring heart, and ignited creativity. Children who develop a healthy balance of mind and spirit are better able to respond to life's challenges when given the tools to think and discover for themselves. Dr. Jenkins gives scores of age-appropriate activities that help children learn empathy, trust, forgiveness, growth, and inner peace.

Parenting for a Peaceful World. Robin Grille, $29.95

In Parenting for a Peaceful World, learn about nurturing your child’s emotional intelligence, and understand how your own childhood experiences have influenced your emotional make-up as an adult and the choices you make as a parent.

Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive. Daniel Siegel & Mary Hartzell, $16.50

Drawing on research in neurobiology, attachment theory and child development, authors Siegel and Hartzell explore the extent to which our childhood experiences shape the way we parent. They explain how these early relationships affect the development of the brain and offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories that will help them in raising compassionate and resilient children.

Parenting: the Long Journey. Joe Rich, $21.99

Although good advice for parents may be found in a variety of resources, Parenting: the Long Journey couples solid advice with encouraging words that can lead to an attitude and relationship approach that will last for the many years after the active parenting of children comes to a close and children enter into adulthood. Author Joe Rich’s advice is non-judgmental and his philosophical approaches like "parents are experts on themselves" and "aim for better not perfect" make the book very inviting to those faced with the challenges of parenting in today's world.

Parenting Without Fear: Letting Go of Worry and Focusing On What Really Matters. Paul Donahue, $18.50

Parenting Without Fear gives you the tools to confront your fears, rethink your goals and teach your children how to be independent, to persevere, to imagine and explore their world, and to develop compassion for others. Discover how to gain the confidence to trust your own judgment, and the courage to make choices about your children’s academic, social and athletic lives that reflect your family’s values and balance your needs with theirs.

Parents’ Lives, Children’s Needs: Working Together for Everyone’s Well-Being. Beth Roy, $18.95

Children grow up naturally, but parenting, in Beth Roy’s words, is a “learned activity”. In Parents’ Lives, Children’s Needs, Roy describes the developmental challenges facing parents at each stage of their child’s growth and offers concrete advice for a humane and gentle approach to parenting, that promotes growth and support for every member of the family.

The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. William Damon, $19.99

The Path to Purpose looks at youth who are thriving — highly engaged in activities they love and developing a clear sense of what they want to do with their lives — and youth who are still rudderless, at serious risk of never fulfilling their potential. What makes the difference? Based on in-depth interviews, Damon offers compelling portraits of the young people who are thriving.  He identifies the nine key factors that have made the difference for them, presenting simple but powerful methods that parents can employ in order to cultivate that energized sense of purpose in young people that will launch them on the path to a deeply satisfying and productive life.

Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. Stuart Brown, $20.00

From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our intelligence and happiness throughout our lives. A fascinating blend of cutting-edge neuroscience, biology, psychology, social science, and inspiring human stories of the transformative power of play, this book proves why play just might be the most important work we can ever do.

The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Healthier, Happier Children. David Elkind, $18.00

In modern childhood, free, unstructured play time is being replaced more and more by academics, lessons, competitive sports, and passive, electronic entertainment. While parents may worry that their children will be at a disadvantage if they are not engaged in constant, explicit learning or using the latest "educational" games, THE POWER OF PLAY reassures us that unscheduled imaginative play goes far in preparing children for academic and social success. Through expert analysis of the research and powerful situational examples, David Elkind shows that, indeed, creative spontaneous activity best sets the stage for academic learning in the first place. An important contribution to the literature about how children learn,THE POWER OF PLAY suggests ways to restore play's respected place in children's lives, at home, at school, and in the larger community. In defense of unstructured ‘down time’, it encourages parents to trust their instincts and resist the promise of the wide and dubious array of educational products on the market geared to youngsters.

Healthy parenting leads to healthy children. While it may seem obvious, it’s a goal that’s often difficult for parents to achieve, especially those who were raised in families where criticism and anger shaped their upbringing. And even those parents who come from healthy family environments struggle to make the right decisions when caught in a parenting ‘moment.’ Filled with practical solutions to everyday dilemmas, as well as offering a map for the larger parenting picture, RAISE YOUR KIDS WITHOUT RAISING YOUR VOICE gives all parents the techniques they need to maintain a peaceful, happy and healthy home.

Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids: 7 Keys to Turn Family Conflict Into Family Co-operation. Sura Hart & Victoria Kindle Hodson, $19.95

Do more than simply correct bad behavior — finally unlock your parenting potential. Use this handbook to move beyond typical discipline techniques and begin creating an environment based on mutual respect, emotional safety, and positive, open communication. Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids offers practical and compassionate ways to discover the mutual respect and nurturing relationships you’ve been looking for. Learn how to:

• Set firm limits without using demands or coercion
• Achieve mutual respect
• Successfully prevent, reduce and resolve conflicts
• Empower your kids to open up, cooperate, and realize their full potential
• Successfully handle disagreements or problem behaviors
• Transform anger and conflict into cooperation and trust
• Create outstanding lifelong relationships with your children

The Rhythm of Family: Discovering a Sense of Wonder through the Seasons. Amanda Blake Soule & Stephen Soule, $22.95

Many of us with busy families yearn for a slower and simpler life with our kids. THE RHYTHM OF FAMILY is a guide to living such a life for any family.

Following the course of a year through the passing of the seasons, this book explores the ways we can create deep family connections and meaningful memories through living in tune with the cycles of nature. From stomping around in mud boots in the spring to gathering around the woodstove in winter, our activities naturally change from season to season—from the rhythms of the seasons comes the rhythms in our homes, our hearts, our families, and our every day. Paying attention to these changes slows us down, inspires new types of creative play and exploration, instills a sense of family togetherness, and deepens an awareness of nature and self that can make our lives, days, family, and earth grow stronger.

THE RHYTHM OF FAMILY explores what we learn and can gain as parents and families by encouraging and experiencing creativity and nature exploration with our children, the seasons can provide us with a rhythm that brings us close to the Earth and closer to our children.

Thought-provoking and controversial, this book offers practical parenting techniques for parents at each age and stage of their baby's development to ensure that their child is psychologically well adjusted and emotionally healthy.

THE SCIENCE OF PARENTING represents the cutting edge of scientific research in the fields of neuroscience and child development. Readers will discover how touch, laughter and play build emotional wellbeing for life, and strategies for effectively dealing with temper tantrums and tears, sleep problems, fears and much more.

• An easy to read, practical book, providing step-by-step guidance on how to react in every-day parenting situations
• Addresses the most popular and commonly recommended child-rearing techniques, endorsing some and challenging others
• An un-patronizing, refreshing alternative in child rearing philosophy

ScreamFree Parenting: the Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool. Hal Edward Runkel, $17.99

The ScreamFree Philosophy is about letting go of our need to manage others and learning to focus more — much more — on managing ourselves. This means learning to calm our own emotional reactivity. Whenever we get reactive — whether by screaming, cutting ourselves off, overcompensating for others, or taking things personally or defensively — we operate out of our anxiety. ScreamFree Living takes this reactivity very seriously and stresses that the number one step toward creating the types of relationships we truly crave is learning to calm down. The ScreamFree Parenting principles will lead parents of all ages (with kids of all ages) to create and enjoy the family relationships they've always craved — starting now.

The Secrets of Happy Families: Eight Keys to Building a Lifetime of Connection and Contentment. Scott Haltzman, $29.95

Research proves that happy families are good for health, longevity, peace of mind, productivity, and success. In The Secrets of Happy Families, psychiatrist Scott Haltzman offers an original approach to building family contentment that works for all families — two-parent, single-parent, blended, childless, or same-sex couple. He provides a “positive psychology” way of solving family problems through strategy and leadership, including knowing and accepting who you are, taking a leadership role in loving and united relationships, building a network of support in extended families and communities, and making quality time for fun, adventures, holidays, and rituals.

Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids. Kim John Payne, $17.00

Simplicity Parenting teaches parents how to worry less — and how to enjoy more. For those who want to slow their children’s lives down but don’t know where to start, Payne offers both inspiration and a blueprint for change. By doing less and trusting more, parents can create a sanctuary that nurtures children’s identity, well-being, and resiliency as they grow — slowly — into themselves. A manifesto for protecting the grace of childhood, Simplicity Parenting is an eloquent guide to bringing new rhythms to bear on the lifelong art of parenting.

Uncle's Dan's Report Card: From Toddlers to Teenagers, Helping Our Children Build Strength with Healthy Habits and Values Every Day. Barbara Unell & Bob Unell, $16.50

With the discovery of their Uncle Dan's school report card from 1914, in which a "Home Report" section of the card was to be completed by parents, Barbara and Robert Unell were inspired to explore the behaviors and values upon which students were "graded" in addition to the standard academic subjects. They realized that these surprising entries, ranging from acts of kindness and truthfulness to personal habits and reading for pleasure, were as timeless and relevant today as they were almost a century ago.

UNCLE DAN'S REPORT CARD gives every parent and caregiver not only a reminder of the worth of these values and behaviors but also a practical means to encourage children to recognize and practice good habits. This book provides the positive, proven tools they can use with toddlers to teens to help them be successful and happy in their everyday lives, personally and academically.

Waking Up: a Parent's Guide to Mindful Awareness and Connection. Raelynn Maloney, $20.95

Practice the MindfulWay of aware parenting and strengthen your relationship with your child.

The War for Children's Minds. Stephen Law, $23.95

How do we raise good children? How do we make good citizens? Tackling authoritarian rhetoric head-on, The War for Children’s Minds takes on neo-conservatives and religious and media commentators in a candid and controversial call for a liberal, philosophically informed approach to raising children. Rejecting accusations that liberal parenting is a Sixties hangover that entails an aimless ‘whatever’ attitude to morality, philosopher Stephen Law exposes the weaknesses of arguments calling for a return to authoritarian styles of moral education. He clearly shows that thinking for oneself does not mean that all moral points of view are equally good, or that we must reject faith in order to think freely. A staunch defense of the humane, liberal life, The War for Children’s Minds is a much-needed guide to an urgent moral conundrum.

We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids. Michael Ungar, $19.99

Engaging and timely, this book is an invaluable resource for parents who want their children to become socially responsible and globally aware adults.

The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, $27.00

This pioneering, practical book explains the new science of how a child's brain is wired and how it matures. The "upstairs brain," which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids can seem—and feel—so out of control. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child's brain and foster vital growth.

Complete with clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles, and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.

The World Needs Your Kid: How to Raise Children Who Care and Contribute.  Craig Kielburger & Marc Kielburger, with Shelley Page, $19.95

Everything you need to know about raising kids, lending a hand and changing the world. Inside this guide is a profound philosophy that encourages children and their parents to become global citizens. Drawing on life lessons and success stories, Marc and Craig Kielburger demonstrate how small actions make a difference in the life of a child and ultimately change the world.

Your Brain on Childhood: the Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms and the Minivan. Gabrielle Principe, $19.50

For most of human existence, childhood was spent in a natural environment. Children spent their days roaming in packs and playing on their own. They improvised their play, invented games, and made up their own rules.  

While modern environments have made life easier and more secure for children, scientists are finding that this new lifestyle is having unwanted side effects on children's brains. Today's structured & controlled surroundings are exactly wrong for developing brains. Children learn by exploration, experimentation & exposure to the real world.

In YOUR BRAIN ON CHILDHOOD, developmental psychologist Gabrielle Principe reviews the consequences of raising children in today's highly unnatural environments and suggests ways in which we can learn to naturalize childhood again, so that a child's home and school environments gel with how the brain was designed to grow.

Fascinating and controversial, this well-researched discussion by an expert on child development will make readers rethink how we are raising our children.

Your Children are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You. Jim Taylor, $16.95

As a parent, your words, attitudes and actions are constantly sending your children messages. These messages influence their earliest ideas about themselves, others and the world around them. This practical guide helps you to stay "on message", to develop positive parenting skills and to make the most of this opportunity to give your children a great start in life.