cover image The Tao of Poop: Keeping Your Sanity (and Your Soul) While Raising a Baby

The Tao of Poop: Keeping Your Sanity (and Your Soul) While Raising a Baby

Vivian Elisabeth Glyck, . . Shambhala, $16.95 (142pp) ISBN 978-1-59030-287-3

In this small book, Glyck, a marketing professional who became a mother late in life, illuminates the dark side of parenting. Babies don't sleep like babies when they're first born, but make a stink at 3 a.m. and bellow for food. This book will provide a belly laugh for some new mothers in desperate need of comic relief, or any kind of relief, from the 24-hour shift that goes with parenting a very young child. It has a niche audience: the economically privileged who are familiar with the milieu of yoga classes for moms who were once achievement-oriented professionals but now battle anxieties about the "right" preschool. The book's 10 principles for sane parenting are clear enough, though not always sufficiently illustrated through stories or anecdotes. Cultural allusion is used as shorthand in place of exposition ("think Angelina Jolie"). With its reference to the popular spirituality book The Tao of Pooh , the title too is cryptic. Readers who like breeziness will gallop through this book. And those who can only read a few pages at a time, between baby chores, will also like its familiar, chatty voice. (Mar. 14)