Joanna Brichetto

Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, by Sandra Steingraber, is an acclaimed biologist’s look at the contamination of our planet and of our kids. It presents facts and evidence terrifying to contemplate. So what is a “thoughtful but overwhelmed” parent to do? Read this book, for a start. As grim as the evidence is, Steingraber seeks “to explore systemic solutions to the ongoing chemical contamination of our children and our biosphere.” She argues that our well-meant weeding of plastic sippy cups and chlorine toilet cleaners don’t really make a dent, and shows that the real solutions will call for larger-scale thinking and major political action, including regulatory frameworks and a global weaning from fossil fuels. The biggest revelation about Raising Elijah, however, is how enjoyable it is to read. A guilty pleasure in the truest sense, Steingraber’s lyrical descriptions of everyday family life and its connections to “urgent public health issues” are astonishing.

Family & Relationships, Parenting

Parenting Family & Relationships

When to call the dog

Review by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

Good parenting skills include keeping kids well and safe. This means knowing whether to treat something at home or call in the experts. But sometimes, we need an expert just to get us that far. My Child Is Sick! Expert Advice for Managing Common Illnesses and Injuries, by pediatrician Barton D. Schmitt, helps parents and caregivers identify symptoms of everyday childhood maladies. The book makes searching easy, with sections organized for specific body areas—for example, Eye, Ear, Nose, Mouth/Throat, Chest/Breathing—or for urgent problems like Bites/Stings and Fever. Within these sections, chapters address specific symptoms and situations, beginning with “Definitions” and “When to Call Your Doctor.” The “when” part is divided into levels from “call 911 now” down to “call your doctor during weekday office hours.” Thankfully, all information—including the detailed Home Care Advice—is presented in clear checklist style. Such visual organization will be a blessing to parents, especially for those unavoidable moments of panic in the middle of the night.

Family & Relationships, Parenting

Parenting Family & Relationships

Parenting predicaments 101

Review by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens is a refreshing take on parenting. Dr. John Duffy, family counselor, life coach and “top teen expert” (an honorific all the more remarkable for its near impossibility) proposes proven techniques to negotiate the ever-changing, seismic shifts of puberty and beyond. What is an available parent? One who encourages a kid to feel heard, understood, supported. Not as a “friend,” but as an effective parent. The author boils it down for us: “Our goal is to foster an environment that is most likely to provide a sense of competence and resilience.” And by focusing on our own behavior (which looks as crazy to our kids as our kids’ behavior looks to us) we can open the lines of communication, establish trust and try to balance fear with love and acceptance. Parental behaviors that don’t work make an all-too-familiar list, including lecturing, micromanaging, smothering, coddling, bribing, waiting and snooping. Luckily, the bulk of the book is all about what does work, along with insider tips and exercises to make us truly available.

Environment, Lifestyles

Lifestyles Environment

Toxic Free

Review by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

Toxic Free is a “quick-start” guide to help readers understand how toxic chemicals affect our health and how to avoid them. Consumer advocate and “Queen of Green” Debra Lynn Dadd (Home Safe Home) starts by targeting the home. Most of us figure on finding bad stuff in our cleaning products, but the author also scrutinizes various beauty products, indoor air pollution, pest control, water, food, textiles, office supplies and interior decoration. Who knew about formaldehyde in no-iron bed sheets, PVP plastic in toothpaste, lead wicks in decorative candles, hazardous chemicals in perfume and DDT in our coffee? For each toxic consumer product in this formidable list, the author offers simple, natural substitutions. She’s not out to scare us, but to mentor us into better health. Another chapter clues us in on how toxic chemicals harm the environment and how we can minimize our “toxic impact.” And what about the harm already done to our unsuspecting bodies? The book suggests many simple and sometimes surprising things we can do to help protect and support our natural detoxification system.

Lifestyles

Lifestyles

A guide for the domestically challenged

Review by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

For years, the author of How to Sew a Button never needed to know how to sew a button. After all, as a senior staff writer at SELF magazine, Erin Bried interviews celebrities around the globe, and her every mundane need—from a mani-pedi to house-cleaning, laundry and meals—is taken care of by people who are paid to do so. Gradually, however, came the realization that through neglect, her practical life skills had dwindled to nil. She found herself afflicted with a classic case of domestic incompetence. Sensing rightly that she was far from alone, she wrote this guide to help the similarly challenged.

Her argument is that all of us are capable of making a decent pie crust, doing our own nails, hanging a picture and hemming a pair of trousers, and that surely we’d feel better if we tried. Why farm out daily details to specialists if we can take care of them ourselves? We’d save money and self-respect. And it isn’t as if we have to do it all, all the time. The goal is to know how to do a few crucial things here and there, and to know when to ask for help. If you can roast a chicken, unclog a toilet, iron a shirt, balance a checkbook, introduce people, swaddle a baby and keep houseplants alive, you qualify as a Domestic Goddess by any reasonable standards.

And standards are kept reasonable by the influence of a unique panel of experts behind each of the many topics. The author interviewed 10 grandmothers who survived the Great Depression with a “make do or do without” attitude, and whose collective wisdom weeds the necessary from the nonsense. Readers are honorary heirs to these balabustas (Yiddish for masterful homemakers), and can approach each gentle lesson as the need arises.

Combating domestic illiteracy one button at a time, How to Sew a Button is a refreshing take on DIY and self-care, valuable for women at any stage of life.

Joanna Brichetto uses her grandmother’s old sewing box regularly.