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Kids' Rooms is a mixed bag: it contains some good design and safety tips, and it is one of the most attractive books in print on decorating kids' rooms. But it also contains tips like this: "If you prefer to use blankets on your child's bed, layer them for added warmth, adjusting the number according to the season." So although one might be tempted to regard this book as symptomatic of a slew of i... More

Kids' Rooms is a mixed bag: it contains some good design and safety tips, and it is one of the most attractive books in print on decorating kids' rooms. But it also contains tips like this: "If you prefer to use blankets on your child's bed, layer them for added warmth, adjusting the number according to the season." So although one might be tempted to regard this book as symptomatic of a slew of irritating trends (parents' urge to control and systematize children's lives, publishers' urge to stretch what could have been a very good magazine article to the breaking point of a costly full-length book), let's instead take a look at what it offers.

Jennifer L�vy's gorgeous photographs of gorgeous rooms, for one thing. If these beautifully lit, enthusiastically gotten-up bedrooms don't inspire you to cross the threshold into the most forbidden room in the house--ignoring the "DO NOT ENTER. THIS MEANS YOU, MOM" sign on the door--then nothing will. You'll be going at it with stencils and chalkboard paint in no time. The Bon Jovi posters in your 13-year-old's purple-and-pink room won't stand a chance.

The book also features several easy, step-by-step projects like lacy lampshades (spray-painted with a doily stencil), a harlequin-design floor (although the instructions specify using polyurethane varnish, which is expressly banned from use in kids' rooms by the "safety tip" four pages later), a folding screen room-divider (canvas stretchers form the frame, and handy patch pockets are sewn onto each panel), an easy-wipe-up vinyl "play tablecloth" with pinked edges and decorative weights at the corners, a dreamy organza pillow sham, and a handprint-decorated light-switch plate. --Liana Fredley

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