When Mother Was A Little Girl

The perfect gift for Brooke Shields fans, There Was a Little Girl explores Brooke's relationship with her unforgettable mother, Teri, in this extraordinary, heartfelt memoir that became a New York Times bestseller. Brooke Shields never had what anyone would consider an ordinary life. She was raised by her Newark-tough single mom, Teri, a woman who loved the world of show business and was often a media sensation all by herself. Brooke's iconic modeling career began by chance when she was only eleven months old, and Teri's skills as both Brooke's mother and her manager were formidable. But in private she was troubled and drank heavily. As Brooke became an adult the pair made choices and sacrifices that would affect their relationship forever. And when Brooke’s own daughters were born she found that her experience as a mother was shaped in every way by the woman who raised her. But despite the many ups and downs, Brooke was by Teri’s side when she died in 2012, a loving daughter until the end. Only Brooke knows the truth of the remarkable, difficult, complicated woman who was her mother. And now, in an honest, open memoir about her life growing up, Brooke will reveal stories and feelings that are relatable to anyone who has been a mother or daughter.

Photography, Life, and the Opposites is about what makes for beauty not only in the author's chosen art, but in all the arts. And it is about life, and how art can teach us to live it. It is based on this extraordinary principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." To illustrate this Len Bernstein has chosen over 70 of his photographs, many of which are in museum collections in the US and abroad, as well as photographs by others. Together with the text, they are a means of asking: What does it mean to have a beautiful way of seeing, a way of seeing that will make us proud? And what stops us from having it?

How Do You Forgive a Parent Who Has Failed You? One summer, Melissa Cistaro’s mother stepped into her baby-blue Dodge Dart and drove away, leaving behind Melissa and her brothers. Rarely seeing their mother as they were growing up, they blamed themselves for her leaving, turning to each other for support and seeking out often destructive ways to cope with living without their mom. Decades later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. She has just days to find out what happened that summer and to confront the unthinkable fear that a “leaving gene” might be lying dormant inside of her. She knew she came from a long line of mothers who left their children. But when Melissa stumbles across a folder titled “Letters Never Sent” tucked away in her mother’s filing cabinet, she begins to feel the wreckage of her mother’s painful journey, before and after she abandoned her family. Alternating between Melissa’s tumultuous coming-of-age and her mother’s final days, Without My Mother is a haunting yet ultimately uplifting story of one woman’s quest to discover how our parents’ choices impact our own and how we can survive those choices to forge our own paths.

Even though she's terrified of the sea, a girl who believes her mum might have been a mermaid runs away to the ocean to solve the mystery of who she really is. Stella is the odd one out. She sleepwalks, is terrified of water, yet obsessed by the ocean. Her mum who died when Stella was eight remains the biggest mystery of all. Who was she and why did she give Stella a necklace called 'the word of the sea' before she died? Nobody can give her any answers. Her father is consumed by grief and her grandmother's memories are fading with dementia. When Stella's only friend in the world, Cam, moves house, Stella runs away. She's determined to find out who her mum was and who she is too. She ends up in the Crystal Cove, a run-down aquarium with a mermaid show. There she meets Pearl who reveals disturbing secrets. It's only by facing her fear of the ocean that Stella will truly uncover the truth. This is an exquisitely imagined story about a girl on an adventure above and below the waves.

A mother tells her own daughter what she was like and what she used to do when she was a little girl.

Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others

A young girl describes her mother's experiences as a child growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Suggested level: junior, primary.

A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg Christmas came. There was not much made of it here, as there had been in Virginia, no gift-giving, but family dinners that often ended in a regular carouse, sometimes a fight. For Pittsburg had not reached any high point of refinement, and was such a conglomerate that they could hardly be expected to agree on all points. The little girl lost interest presently in watching for her father, and half believed he was not coming. She was very fond of grandad, and Norry, and the wonderful stories she heard about fairies and "little folk," who came to your house at night, and did wonderful things—sometimes spun the whole night long, and at others did bits of mischief. This was when you had offended them some way. She liked the Leprecawn so much. He was a fairy shoemaker, and when all was still in the night you sometimes heard him. "Tip tap, rip rap, Tick a tack too!" And the little Eily, who wished so for red shoes, but her folks were too poor to buy them. So she was to find six four-leaf clovers, and lay them on the doorstep, which she did. "What a queer noise there was in the night," said the mother. "It was like this, 'Tip tap, rip rap,'" "Sho!" said the father, "it was the swallows in the chimney." Eily held her peace, but she put four-leafed clovers again on the doorstep, and tried to keep awake, so she could hear the little shoemaker. "I'll clear them swallows out of the chimney, they disturb me so," declared the father, and he got a long pole and scraped down several nests. But the next night the sound came again, and the mother began to feel afeared. But when Eily went downstairs there was a pair of little red shoes standing in the corner, and Eily caught them up and kissed them, she was so full of joy. Then her mother said, "The Leprecawn has been here. And, Eily, you must never wear them out of doors at the full of the moon, or you'll be carried off."