Here are 100 books that Growing Up Shared fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!
Media producers, digital designers, educators, child psychologists – professionals with different kinds of expertise and experience have different insights to offer.
I find it fascinating how these insights converge in this book on a vision of childhood that I can really support – children are seen as active agents making sense of their digital world, but also in need of thoughtful mentoring and guidance from parents, educators, and media producers.
Unlike some books which forget that media are not just tech but also content, this book really engages with the kinds of cultural representations that now populate children’s lives and imaginations. Of course there are differences between the authors, so this book offers plenty of food for thought to the reader.
All the essays are short, so you can get the gist of an argument and further reading in just a few pages – and each one has something new…
Exploring Key Issues in Early Childhood and Technology offers early childhood allies, both in the classroom and out, a cutting-edge overview of the most important topics related to technology and media use in the early years.
In this powerful resource, international experts share their wealth of experience and unpack complex issues into a collection of accessibly written essays. This text is specifically geared towards practitioners looking for actionable information on screen time, cybersafety, makerspaces, coding, computational thinking, STEM, AI and other core issues related to technology and young children in educational settings. Influential thought leaders draw on their own experiences…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!
As a researcher, I’m always looking out for fresh ways to approach familiar problems.
Three problems really bother me. One is the idea of reducing all the different types of media, and all the different ways families use media, to a simplistic formula – screen time. As if we could just measure screen time, reduce it by turning parents into screen time police, and thereby solve the problems of our digital age.
Another is the idea of seeing parents as having all the power and children as willful or ignorant or naughty and so needing to be controlled. As if families weren’t trying to be more democratic and as if parents had nothing to learn from their children. The third is the idea that families have got to work all this out on their own, as if digital innovators and the wider society weren’t in some ways part of the…
Children and Families in the Digital Age offers a fresh, nuanced, and empirically-based perspective on how families are using digital media to enhance learning, routines, and relationships. This powerful edited collection contributes to a growing body of work suggesting the importance of understanding how the consequences of digital media use are shaped by family culture, values, practices, and the larger social and economic contexts of families' lives. Chapters offer case studies, real-life examples, and analyses of large-scale national survey data, and provide insights into previously unexplored topics such as the role of siblings in shaping the home media ecology.
I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!
I love how balanced and practical this book is, full of suggestions for parents to try out.
Yet at the same time, it’s thoroughly grounded in independent research. Crucially, it steers clear of moral panics about how tech is making everything worse and, instead, builds on tried and tested insights from evidence. This combination is because it’s written by an Oxford University professor and a parenting counsellor.
It’s also full of parents’ experiences – as I try to do in my own work, the book reminds us how incredibly diverse families are. So, there are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions – but after reading it, I felt there’s plenty I and other parents can do to support children growing up in a digital world. And that’s very encouraging!
Children today are digital natives, growing up in an age where social media and online communication is the norm. This book is an indispensable guide for parents who may feel they are struggling to keep up, addressing the issues that young people and their families face in the world of modern technology. Suzie Hayman, a parenting counsellor, and John Coleman, a distinguished psychologist, use their combined expertise to explore the challenges and possibilities of being constantly connected, helping parents to make choices about how they communicate, set boundaries and establish rules.
Using real-world examples and solid psychological theory, the book…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!
This book was published ten years ago, and it’s as fresh and relevant as ever. I’ve chosen to highlight it here because, honestly, it’s the classic book that catalyzed many researchers into properly listening to young people and really respecting their views.
I learned a lot from danah boyd’s fieldwork about how to put effort into gaining teens’ trust, avoiding adult assumptions, and properly listening to what teens had to say. The teens in this book are often troubled, struggling with mental health problems and difficult life circumstances – but it's not their fault, they are facing so many real-world problems – poverty, family breakdown, racism, etc.
As a result, teens turn to technology for support, privacy, intimacy, and belonging. But in key ways, technology can also make things worse. I found this book truly thought-provoking.
"boyd's new book is layered and smart . . . It's Complicated will update your mind."-Alissa Quart, New York Times Book Review
"A fascinating, well-researched and (mostly) reassuring look at how today's tech-savvy teenagers are using social media."-People
"The briefest possible summary? The kids are all right, but society isn't."-Andrew Leonard, Salon
What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She…
I’m a Rutgers professor of psychology and a body image scientist. Growing up, I was a dancer and learned to be dissatisfied with my body at a young age. These concerns inhabited so much mental space during my adolescence that I ultimately began to study these issues in college as a way to better understand myself and others who had similar experiences. I’ve been doing research on body image and eating behaviors for over 25 years now and write books about these topics to help other kids and adults who may be struggling with these issues. Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we all felt comfortable in our own skin?
I love this book because the author, Molly Forbes, is so relatable. She’s a mom trying to figure out all of this confusing stuff about body image, health, and well-being for her own sake and her kids.
I found this book to be very accessible and easy to read yet packed with valuable information and even hands-on activities. Perhaps I liked this book best because it feels authentic and hopeful.
We are not born hating our bodies. Make sure your kids never do.
No parent wants their child to grow up with anything less than wholehearted confidence in themselves. Sadly research shows that children as young as five are saying they need to 'go on a diet' and over half of 11 to 16-year-olds regularly worry about the way they look. Campaigner and mum-of-two-girls Molly Forbes is here to help.
In Body Happy Kids, Molly draws on her own experience and a range of experts to provide parents with a much-needed antidote to the confusing health advice that bombards us…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This tale is the autobiographical account of a married man who, when his wife gets an especially nice promotion opportunity, agrees with her that it makes more sense for him to stay at home with their young girl child.
He takes his role and its responsibilities seriously. His story is mostly the story of what is involved being the domestic partner on a day-to-day basis, but braided into that is the specifically gendered experience of doing all that as a male person in this society.
Lincoln Menner is finding out just how hard it is to be a woman. When his wife Jo was offered her dream job, Linc supported her wholeheartedly, leaving his thriving landscape business in Los Angeles and moving to Rochester, New York. This was a chance to escape the cloying needs and atrocious tastes of his celebrity clientele, start over in fresh surroundings, and spend a little quality time with their three-year-old daughter, Violet.
But Linc had no idea what it really meant to be a househusband: To stay home every day, folding laundry, cleaning soap scum, and teaching his little…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
I promise that will be the only egg pun I will use. Just the one. Eggsactly one. Oops.
While my debut novel, Ava, is primarily about the clash of reproductive rights with conservative politics set in the South, it is obviously also about eggs and my bias towards them as an amazing evolutionary triumph. Even the title of my book is an intentional nod toward my love of eggs as Ava means both “bird” and “life”. With that in mind, I wanted to highlight five books that I love that are very egg-centric (and I will maintain this is more of a portmanteau than a pun).
I loved this book as a kid, and I make a reference to this classic in a chapter of my book.
Whenever I want to quit a particularly frustrating endeavor, I still hear Horton’s voice in my head: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.” Those words, spoken by a cartoon elephant, have helped me persevere and taught me the importance of loyalty and keeping my word.
It’s a message as meaningful for adults as it is for children.
Horton the elephant babysits an egg in this classic tale of kindness from Dr. Seuss.
Everyone laughs when Horton the Elephant offers to sit on Mayzie bird's egg while she goes on holiday. Horton's kindness and faithfulness are sorely tested when he, and the egg, are kidnapped and sold to a circus - but his reward for being faithful is more wonderful than he could ever have dreamed!
With his unique combination of hilarious stories, zany pictures and riotous rhymes, Dr. Seuss has been delighting young children and helping them learn to read for over fifty years. Creator of the…
I’ve become passionate about telling parents how to raise happy, resilient, creative, confident, entrepreneurial children who are doing something that gives them joy. So many young people are unhappy; parents don’t understand how to help. They think their children should follow their path, but that no longer works for many. For the last 10 years, I’ve been speaking to parent groups; I was an Advisor to EQ Generation, an after-school program that gives children the skills to succeed; on the Advisory Board of MUSE School, preparing young people with passion-based learning; and on the Board of Spark the Journey, mentoring low-income high school students to achieve college and career success.
I loved reading Esther’s book shortly after mine came out because even though we didn’t know each other when we wrote them–and even though they are written very differently–we agree on every major point.
While my book is based on interviews with 70 other families, hers is based on her personal experiences: raising extraordinary children (the CEO of YouTube and the CEO of 23andMe) and creating the country’s largest high school journalism program. But we both agree on how to raise children: trust them, give them independence, teach them to have grit, and model kindness.
______________________________ Being a parent is complicated - but the trick to succeed is simpler than you think.
There are no Nobel Prizes for parenting or education, but if there were, Esther Wojcicki would be the bookies' favourite. Known as the Godmother of Silicon Valley - or simply Woj - Esther's three daughters have all gone on to huge success in their professional fields and, more importantly, their personal lives. What's her secret?
As we face an epidemic of parental and childhood anxiety, Woj has the advice every parent wants to hear: climb out of that helicopter and relax.
I’ve been fascinated by relationships since I was a kid. I grew up a keen observer of the relationships in my own family, mostly focused on the way in which the dynamics were difficult for me. This led me to develop a strong interest in psychology, a passion I pursued in my undergraduate education. I became acutely intrigued by an idea a professor exposed me to early on – that experiences of safety and security within attachment relationships are essential in order for children to thrive, and that without safety/security, they can experience chronic struggles. This early interest paved the way for what developed into my career as a psychology professor and therapist.
In this book, Dr. Lieberman holds parents’ hands as she walks through toddlers’ emotional experiences.
She draws upon her work as both a clinician and a researcher in writing this book, leaving a narrative that is fresh and also well informed. As a long-time fan of Dr. Lieberman, I can feel her respect for young children emanating throughout this book.
Any parent who has tried to keep up with an active toddler for a whole day knows that a child of this age is a whirlwind of contradictory, explosive and ever-changing emotions. In this book, child psychologist Alicia Lieberman addresses common emotional issues and questions facing parents with children this age. Why, for example, is "no" often the favourite response of the toddler? How should parents deal with the anger they sometimes feel in the face of their toddler's unflagging obstinacy? Why does a crying toddler run to its mother for a hug, only to push himself away as soon…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
One of the main things I do for work is encourage parents to awaken their playful and empathic hearts and play with their kids—roughhousing play, dramatic play, games—and really listen to their kids. The connection this brings is unmistakable, and irreplaceable. Because so many adults, myself included, seem to have forgotten what it was like to be a child, I am always amazed when someone gets it. These are five books that brought me back there, from writers who somehow remembered, and share that understanding with compassion. (I was limited to books, but if I could have included a movie I would recommend C’mon C’mon.)
Korczak was a pediatrician, an educator, a champion of children’s rights, the director of orphanages, and much more.
He said, “A child has a right to grief, even if it is for the loss of a pebble.” And he knew about grief.
He cared for orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, and he accompanied the children to a concentration camp, even though he was offered the chance to escape.
He said, “They children will be scared without me there with them.” He marched with them to the train, carrying a green flag, which was the symbol of his beloved character King Matt, a child king who tried to unite all the children of the world in peace.
He did not survive, but we are very lucky to have his writings. He is my biggest hero, and my biggest inspiration.
How to Love a Child and Other Selected Works is the first comprehensive collection of Korczak's works translated into English. It contains his most important pedagogical writings, journal articles, as well as private texts. Volume 1 comprises three pedagogical works, the first being How to Love a Child. This is a tetralogy presenting the life of a child in a family from birth to puberty, the challenges of raising children in childcare institutions, Korczak's first practical experiences gained while working at summer camps and a detailed account of his work at the Orphans' Home--the orphanage where he was the headmaster.…
