How Not to Raise a Perfect Child
Published on 7. October 1999
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-340-75137-4 (ISBN)
Description
A perfect child:
* Dresses neatly and practises the violin before breakfast
* Comes top of the class and is captain of everything
* Is unfailingly obedient and sweet-tempered
* Is a perfect credit to its perfect mother
A real child:
* Prefers shoelaces undone and mismatched socks
* Shouts 'Bum!' at Granny
* Turns breakfast and bedtime into a battleground
* Is the normal offspring of imperfect parents
With affectionate lack of illusion and a refreshing honesty about her own shortcomings, Libby Purves examines the pleasures and pitfalls of raising children from three to eight years old. Playgroup, starting school, rude words, pets - all these topics are tackled with frank good humour and down-to-earth advice.
Best of all is her reassuring reminder that there is no such thing as a perfect child.
* Dresses neatly and practises the violin before breakfast
* Comes top of the class and is captain of everything
* Is unfailingly obedient and sweet-tempered
* Is a perfect credit to its perfect mother
A real child:
* Prefers shoelaces undone and mismatched socks
* Shouts 'Bum!' at Granny
* Turns breakfast and bedtime into a battleground
* Is the normal offspring of imperfect parents
With affectionate lack of illusion and a refreshing honesty about her own shortcomings, Libby Purves examines the pleasures and pitfalls of raising children from three to eight years old. Playgroup, starting school, rude words, pets - all these topics are tackled with frank good humour and down-to-earth advice.
Best of all is her reassuring reminder that there is no such thing as a perfect child.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for More Lives Than One:'An idiosyncratic blend of her journalistic voice ... With the skills of a writer who understands the proper balance in a novel between issue and narrative. ... This is her best novel ... [and] will find an answering echo in many readers' * Elizabeth Buchan, The Times * All the compassion characteristic of her writing in her previous novels and columns. ... This is a humane and perceptive novel * Woman & Home * A good story, crisply and lightly told, that touches on many of teaching's current preoccupations and dilemmas and that grows in depth as it unfolds * The Times Educational Supplement * The kind of book that you race to finish and then think about for a long time afterwards * The Lady * Libby Purves' prose is clean, sharp and in touch with things that matter * Daily Express *
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Hodder & Stoughton
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
b/w cartoons
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
137 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-340-75137-4 (9780340751374)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Libby Purves
How Not to Raise a Perfect Child
E-Book
07/2012
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
€3.99
Available for download
Person
Libby Purves is a writer and also a broadcaster who has presented the talk programme Midweek on Radio 4 since 1984 and formerly presented Today. She is a main columnist on the Times and in 1999 was named the Granada "What the Papers Say" Columnist of the Year, and awarded a O.B.E for services to journalism. She lives in Suffolk with her husband the broadcaster and writer Paul Heiney.