Announcing the Brilliant Book Club! {And a Giveaway}

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Brilliant book club

My dear readers, I am so excited about this! Today I am launching a book club for parents with four other amazing bloggers!

Because parenting is complex. Our intuition, our personality, our child’s unique temperament, our family wisdom, and, honestly, sheer accident and trial-and-error all play a role in how we parent. But there is also a growing body of research and reflective writing that provides parents with data and insight to inform our choices and philosophies.

Enter The Brilliant Book Club!

The Brilliant Book Club is a collaborative project among five bloggers: Lauren Apfel of Omnimom, Deb CG of Urban Moo Cow, Sarah Rudell Beach of Left Brain Buddha {that’s me!}, Jessica Smock of School of Smock and Stephanie Sprenger of Mommy, For Real.

Although we are all busy parents, we still love to read thought-provoking books and share our thoughts and reactions with one another. So we figured we’d start a book club!

The Brilliant Book Club is for parents who want to read the latest books about parenting — from research-based books on parenting practice to books that reflect on the emotional and personal aspects of childrearing.

Think of it as Back to School…. for you!! 🙂

Every other month, we will select a recent book about parenting. Over eight weeks, we will invite you to read our selected book along with us, and share your ideas with us on Facebook, Twitter and our blogs. On the last Monday of each month, each of us will write a post about our thoughts on the current selection and our own unique perspective on it as parents.

We encourage you to read, reflect and share with us as we illuminate the parenting research and insights that can help us, and our children, shine.

Read. Reflect. Share.

Shine.

The Brilliant Book Club.

*****

Our first book selection is Hilary Levey Friedman’s Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture. Here’s the description from the back of the book:

“Why do American children participate in so many adult-run activities outside of the home, especially when family time is so scarce? By analyzing the roots of these competitive afterschool activities and their contemporary effects, Playing to Win contextualizes elementary school-age children’s activities, and suggests they have become proving grounds for success in the tournament of life—especially when it comes to coveted admission to elite universities, and beyond.

In offering a behind-the-scenes look at how “Tiger Moms” evolve, Playing to Win introduces concepts like competitive kid capital, the carving up of honor, and pink warrior girls. Perfect for those interested in childhood and family, education, gender, and inequality, Playing to Win details the structures shaping American children’s lives as they learn how to play to win.”

To learn more about the book, you can read this excerpt from an August 6, 2013 post in The Atlantic: “Soccer Isn’t for Girly-Girls? How Parents Pick the Sports Their Daughters Play.”

Our first post on the book will be on Monday, September 30. We encourage you to read the book and join the dialogue on our new Brilliant Book Club Facebook page, on Twitter with the hashtag #BrilliantBooks, and on our blogs. You can also find us on Pinterest and Google+.

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Enter the Giveaway

To encourage you to join us, we are giving away a copy of the book to one lucky participant! To enter, click the Rafflecopter link below and do one (or all!) of the following actions, including liking The Brilliant Book Club on Facebook, tweeting about us with the hashtag #BrilliantBooks, or leaving a comment below. You can also get credit for the entry by liking and following us individually.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I really hope you’ll join us!

You can find me and my fellow Brilliant Book Club bloggers below:

Lauren
Deb
Sarah {me}
Jessica
Stephanie

Will you be joining us? What parenting books have you read lately that you have enjoyed?

Sarah Rudell Beach
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