★★★★★ 5
If you're a parent, you want to read this book
Format: Hardcover
Jessica Lahey and I have never met in person, though we have been online writerly acquaintances for about five years. She has read my writings and commented on them (as has, in one case, her son, Finn), and I am professionally acquainted with her sister, Anna Jones. All this to let you know that while this comment is as unbiased as possible, there is a connection between us.
THE GIFT OF FAILURE is an important book, useful and lucid. Jessica has researched many resources -- the book's bibliography is six pages of small type, listing 154 sources -- and has distilled their findings, conclusions, suggestions, prescriptions, proscriptions, warnings, and encouragements into a tight, well-structured, and eminently readable guide for the possibly perplexed American parent. If you have school-aged children, please allow me to urge you to read this book and keep it handy.
The one caveat I will raise is that Jessica is writing from a certain solidly middle-class perspective, in the older definition of the middle class as a well-educated, professionally successful, and financially privileged population. Some readers may find her casual references to such luxuries as private schools, Latin classes, and schedules jam-packed with soccer games, dance lessons, and music tutorials, to be distancing. Don't let those frills distract you. They are minimal and immaterial. This book is filled in generous measure, packed down and flowing over, with insights and advice of value to any parent of school-aged children, from any segment of society. I can only wish that THE GIFT OF FAILURE had been available when I was raising my own son and trying to figure out how best to do it.
(NB -- Amazon tells me that if I give this book four stars, that means "I like it," while if I give it five, that means "I love it." Well, I don't "love" it, but I more than "like" it; since I can't give it four-and-a-half stars, or 4.9, or some such, I am giving it five. It is an important book.)
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Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2015
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