Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.
Penguin, New York, 2011.
Adult nonfiction, 244 pages.
Not leveled.

The story of a mother who tries to apply strict Chinese parenting techniques to her American daughters and finds that she’s making all of them miserable.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

Just as I’m working on my goal of trying to write negative and neutral reviews (and thus be able to pass along those books and clear shelves), I was given books by a few different acquaintances. This was exciting as new-to-me books always are, and it was frustrating because there were far more books incoming than outgoing on these review shelves! So I did a push to read and review several in order to keep things moving. Among them were some Amy Chua books, and this was the earliest published so I gave it a try.

Review: Child, Please

Child, Please: How Mama’s Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself Before I Wrecked Myself by Ylonda Gault Caviness.
Jeremy P. Tarchen, Penguin Random House, New York, 2015.
Adult memoir, 302 pages.
Not leveled.

One mother’s journey to reconcile her own upbringing with modern parenting article advice.

Child, Please by Ylonda Gault Caviness.

As mentioned, I’ve been on a major nonfiction slump. Although reading required for classes and work has gotten done, I havn’t read any adult nonfiction for personal enjoyment in over a year. That’s longer than the break I took after graduating! A lot of that was Covid, blogging and other non-essential activities falling by the wayside, and since I strongly prefer fiction, what freedom I had went towards what was most fun.

I tried joining a challenge and buying new books but I still was just reading a chapter here and there, so looked back to my interests. Diverse of course. Biography/memoir. Parenting. Other areas I like to read about normally, like history, but lately just… couldn’t. Luckily, Caviness’ Child, Please was just right to remind me of the joys of a well-crafted true story.

Review: The Lucky Few

The Lucky Few: Finding God’s Best in the Most Unlikely Places by Heather Avis.
Zondervan, HarperCollins, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2017.
Adoptive parent memoir, 223 pages.
Not Leveled.

This is the story of one woman who couldn’t become a mother even though all she yearned for was motherhood.  This is the story of her three children, and the journey she and her husband went through to bring them home and accept them as forever family.

This was a fairly light and quick read.  (I finished it in a few hours, your mileage may vary.)  I think if I didn’t know so many people in situations very similar to hers, this might have had more impact.  As it was, I felt like she kept the story extremely positive and glossed over a lot of the harsh realities.  However, that makes sense given that the goal of this book is to reach as many people as possible.

In parts it is more obvious than others that Avis was extremely lucky.  She glosses over the birth family of their daughter Truly Star, which makes sense because she is quite young yet and not ready to decide if she wants to disclose that information to the world.  She has close and loving relationships with the birth families of her other two children.  That’s fairly unusual, especially the birth family reaction to her.  Perhaps it’s a different scenario because they have Down Syndrome as opposed to other challenges.