Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love Edited by Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D.

Story Angles

1. Top Ten Things We Love Most About Toddlers:  This book explores the things parents love about raising toddlers.  But it does so without any fake gloss or tinsel: it is a book about real life by real people who honestly share their joys and their fears about their raising their children.

2. Stories That Help: New theories about parenting are increasingly showing that advice books engender guilt on behalf of the parents—mostly mothers—who read them.  Instead of offering advice and guilt, Toddler helps to create a community of parents who can find out that the frustrations and joys they are experiencing with their two-foot tall terrors are not theirs alone.  Like Rachel Naomi Remen’s Kitchen Table Wisdom, a book that helps people who have faced death heal, Toddler will help the parents of toddlers and expectant parents know that they are not alone.

3. The Daughter of a Famous Microbiologist Tells the Truth About Parenting: What is it like to be the daughter of an internationally known scientist whose theories, once totally discounted, now appear in every Biology 101 textbook in the country?  In Toddler, editor Jennifer Margulis tells the truth about the joys and difficulties parenting her toddler in the light of her own mother’s commitment to her career.  A member of the National Academy of Science and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Science, her mother—Lynn Margulis—was recently featured as a “Top Fifty Innovators Over 50” in the AARP Magazine.  Her latest book, Acquiring Genomes, posits a new theory of the origin of speciation.

4. Giving Voice to Fathers: Toddler reflects the new demographic of families and includes the voices of many stay-at-home fathers.  According to the Census Bureau, there are over 1.9 million American men who are the primary caregivers of their children.  At least 450,000 of these stay home with their children full time.  Yet despite the fact that stay-at-home dads are becoming increasingly common (a headline in the Washington Post from 2001 reads “more and more dads decide to be stay-at-home fathers”), few books on parenting reflect this new trend.

5. Potty Training Problems?  Sleep deprivation? Tantrums? Toddler tells about a family doctor whose triplets refuse to be toilet trained, about a mother whose second child defies sleep no matter what she does, about the spectacular failure of a family day due to a two-year-old’s very public outburst.  From the triumph of a mother’s simple outing to the zoo with kids in tow to a father’s defeat in the bathroom, these stories will make you laugh and cry and, most importantly, realize that you are not alone.

6. Mothers Who Write: Editor Jennifer Margulis compiled this book while pregnant and taking care of two toddlers full time.  How did she do it?  What are the secrets to successfully balancing a career and a family life?
 

About the Editor

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is a freelance writer, writing consultant, and photojournalist.  She has eaten fried crickets in Niger, appeared on prime-time TV in France, and performed the can-can in America.

Jennifer earned a B.A. from Cornell University in English literature and Russian language, an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. from Emory University in American literature.  A 19th-century Americanist with a sub-specialty in African-American literature,  she has taught classes in American literature,  African-American literature, writing, and English as a Second Language on three different continents.  In the United States she has had the privilege of working with students at the University of California at Berkeley, Brenau University, Bradford College, Emory University, and Mount Holyoke College.  Her dissertation, “Swarthy Pirates and White Slaves,” reveals the importance of white American slavery in North Africa on the literature of 19th-century America.

While raising two small children and pregnant with her third, Jennifer turned her attention to writing.  She has published in Ms. Magazine, World Pulse Magazine, Parenting, Newsday, Mothering, Brain, Child, and dozens of other national magazines.  In addition, she is a regular contributor to two local niche publications—Healthy Life and Valley Kids—and she has recently begun writing a weekly column, "Tales From the Crib," for the Ashland Daily Tidings (add link).  In addition to publishing journalistic articles, creative non-fiction, scholarly writing, and book reviews, she has co-edited (with Karen Poremski) one other book: a classroom edition of Susanna Haswell Rowson’s 1794 play, Slaves in Algiers; or a Struggle for Freedom (Copley Publishers, 2000).  She owns a little red farm house in western Massachusetts but has recently moved with her family to Ashland, Oregon.
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Interview Questions

Talking with Toddler Contributors
 

1. There are literally hundreds of parenting books on the market.  Do we really need another one?

2. How are toddlers “fickle, irrational, urgent, tiny people”?

3. One of the authors writes that “toddlers are, by their very nature, walking death threats to themselves.”  What does she mean?

4. What are the things that every parent should be prepared for when their baby hits toddlerhood?

5. You have a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn.  How did you find the time to compile this book?

6. How will this book help people become better parents?

7. Some of the toddler antics in this book are familiar to me though my children are much older.  Are toddlers like teenagers?

8. Jennifer Margulis, your mother, Lynn Margulis, won the National Medal of Science, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and is an internationally acclaimed microbiologist.  What is it like to have such a famous mother and be a mother now yourself?

9. What’s your most embarrassing parenting story?

10. You chose to include several stories by men.  There’s a story in here by writer Peter Fong about his flyfishing adventure with his son in a backpack and one by novelist Gordon Korman about his son’s obsession with cars and trucks.  Another is by a freshly minted stay-at-home dad that starts with his two-year-old’s words, “I have to close my butt!”  But we all know men don’t read about parenting.  Do you really think men will enjoy this book?

11. What is the most challenging thing about raising a toddler?

12. What is the best thing about raising a toddler?

13. What is your favorite story in this book?

14. You worked on an Africare Child Survival Project in West Africa and you have spoken out against child slavery in Pakistan.  Do you think parents need to be advocates for children?

15. Your first book was scholarly: a co-edited classroom edition of an 18th-century play.  Toddler is your second book.  Now what’s next for Jennifer Margulis?

Press Releases

 

Toddler Turns One

Blogging for Books

Critics Say Sex Has No Place in Toddler Book

New Book About Toddlers