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November is National Inspirational Role Models Month. Whose posters are on your child’s walls? Whether its sports, music, fashion, or any other subject of special interest to your child, providing books that speak to a personal passion builds on the association of reading with pleasure. It is also a powerful way to affirm your child’s individuality.

Our teenage son Sam has always been Mr. Non-Fiction. When he was very young, he was passionate about trucks. We read everything we could get our hands on in the “truck” genre, from You Can Name 1000 Trucks to I Stink! These days, he’s into humor, baseball, and classic rock.  We offer up a lot of baseball and musician memoirs, and point him towards authors like Gary Paulsen, Gerald Durrell, Mike Lupica and Matt Christopher.  As long as he’s reading for pleasure, we’re happy.

Our seven year-old daughter Hope is all about fantasy. Her heroes are princesses, fairies, ponies and ballerinas, along with girl rock stars, fashionistas and just plain gutsy girls. (What can I say? No matter how hard we tried to be gender-neutral parents, we ended up with two gender-stereotype kids.)  She loves series books, including the Pony Pals, Rainbow Magic and Magic Treehouse series, as well as the Allie Finkle, Just Grace and Clarice Bean books.  As long as the protagonist is female!

Today's Youth Advisory Board post is from American teen in Switzerland Caroline Marques who contributes her thoughts to our YAB series on role models with her take on some of the more prevalent examples of aspirational figures in the media today. ... Read the rest of this post

Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post is the first in what we hope will be a new monthly series of YAB posts (and possibly vlogs) around issues sparking deep thought or debate in young minds today (suggestions for future topics are welcome in... Read the rest of this post

You know how your kids sometimes repeat things you really wish they wouldn't? I had a perfect example of that recently. I was just introducing a new fingerplay to the toddlers and I told them all to put their hands on their heads, or reach their arms up, and one little cutie obeyed, but then gave a quizzical look and said, "What the hell?" Luckily I don't think anyone else caught it, or Mom probably would have been embarrassed.

Yes folks, we are role models in everything we do, say, and think. They watch every move, and imitate, listen to every word, and imitate, observe every attitude, and imitate. The darn little critters are so smart! I still see it in my teenagers, and I can even pinpoint which behavior or attitude came from me, and which from my husband. I'll see my daughter do or say something (good or bad) and think "I didn't teach you that. Oh yeah, your dad did."

This is why I love it when I see parents at Storytime fully participating with their kids. Their children are learning so much from seeing you sing the songs, do the motions to the fingerplays, and praising and encouraging their efforts. Even at Preschool Storytime, when you listen to the stories so you can talk about them afterward, they get a definite message - actually several messages: storytime is important, listening is important, books are fun, stories are interesting, we can share this together.

There's so much to Storytime than just something for your child to do. That's one reason I love my job so much. And I love your kids, too!

Different Like Coco
Author/Illustrator: Elizabeth Matthews
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN-10: 0763625485
ISBN-13: 978-0763625481


I loved this book! First of all, I’m a big Coco Chanel fan. Love those clothes and that vintage Chanel look. Of course, being a curvy Latina I’d never fit in her vintage stuff. What I really loved about this book though was the fact that it tells about a young, poor girl wanting more, striving for it, dreaming of it and making it happen. I loved that Coco changed fashion to suit her instead of changing herself to suit fashion. Different Like Coco is a fantastic little book with some important lessons.

We live in a society that is so focused on what is perceived to be beauty and are pretty darn obsessed with it. I hate that. It drives me crazy. I worry about my granddaughters and their self-image and try to turn them away from all that stuff.

My granddaughters are never going to be sized zero boyish looking waifs. Curves are their legacy and curves are beautiful. They’re not going to look like Coco. They can however, have her fiery and independent spirit. They can make the world to suit themselves. I want my granddaughters to know that they are beautiful, intelligent, kind and caring young women who need to be happy and celebrate just how beautiful they are inside and out. Real beauty. Goodness needs to shine through, not how much you make or how skinny you are.

It’s an ongoing battle when they are bombarded with television, magazines, billboards, you name it and to top it off, we live in L.A., Hollywood is a skip away. It’s going to be a rough and stormy battle as they grow up. Books like this one are important in that battle.




Little girls will love this book as will their mothers. The illustrations are beautiful and they give a sense of what Coco must have been like. Personality and style fairly leaps off the pages. The story is a great inspiration based upon a real role model for little girls to look up to. Highly recommended!



Book Description from the publisher:
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was always different. And she vowed to prove that being different was an advantage! Poor, skinny, and orphaned, Coco stubbornly believed that she was as good as the wealthier girls of Paris. Tapping into her creativity and her sewing skills, she began making clothes that suited her (and her pocketbook) -- and soon a new generation of independent working women craved her sleek, comfortable, and practical designs. Now an icon of fashion and culture, Coco Chanel continues to inspire young readers, showing just how far a person can come with spunk, determination, and flair. The rags-to-riches story of Coco Chanel plays out in a wonderful picture-book biography as full of style and spirit as its heroine.



About the Author:
Elizabeth Matthews makes her chic picture-book debut with this lively look at a legendary woman. Says the author-illustrator, "When I look in my closet, it’s easy to appreciate what Coco Chanel accomplished for herself, for women, for fashion, and, of course, for little black dresses everywhere." A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Elizabeth Matthews lives in Cumberland, Rhode Island.