As co-host of Highveld’s Rude Awakening, presenter of Great Expectations on etv, author and mother Sam Cowen is a busy woman. So, which dream vacation does she fantasize about? Vernice Shaw found out…

Where did you spend your last holiday? Mauritius.

What was the best thing you did while there? Swimming in the sea with my children. It’s so calm, warm and blue you can float for ever.

Your favourite city abroad and why? Florence. It’s so romantic, steeped in history and beautiful. If you own an apartment on the river, you’re not allowed to change the colour of the walls of any room overlooking the water, so it stays aesthetically pleasing to passers-by. That’s a city determined to keep itself pristine.

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Book details

• Good Enough Mother by Sam Cowen
  EAN: 9781770200173
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• The Irreverent Mothers’ Handbook by Sam Cowen, Lee van Loggerenberg
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  EAN: 9781770200852
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Image courtesy ParadoxPlace

Sometimes it seems that children instinctively gravitate to food that’s bad for them – you never have to beg them to eat ice cream or chocolate or chips. Vegetables are a different story entirely. Cari Corbet-Owen has good news for desperate parents in her book Mom, Pass the Broccoli: How to Empower Your Child with Healthy Eating Habits for Life.

The holidays are especially tempting times – they can devolve into a month of pure sugar overload! So how to cope?

On her blog, Corbet-Owen shares some of her tips from the book:

If you’re looking for idea on children eating healthy, you’ve come to the right place. It’s a subject close to my heart.

No matter where I’ve done workshops, the most common question I get from parents revolves around concerns about their childrens eating. Everywhere I go I hear about finicky eaters, obese children or children who are underweight and I sense the desperation of parents wishing they knew what was best for their children.

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Book details

• Mom Pass the Broccoli: How to Empower Your Child with Healthy Eating Habits for Life by Cari Corbet-Owen
  EAN: 9781770200876
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy Ditch Diets Live Light

How many times have you heard your child say, “Mom, pass the broccoli?”

Many parents find it a great challenge to encourage healthy eating in their children. In Mom Pass the Broccoli: How to Empower Your Child with Healthy Eating Habits for Life clinical psychologist Cari Corbett-Owen empowers parents to develop healthy eating habits in their families.

The book explodes the myths surrounding children’s food choices, explores scientific research into food preferences and the growing problem of childhood obesity, and exposes marketing methods that encourage unhealthy eating.

Packed with practical tips, Mom, Pass the Broccoli provides parents with the tools to tackle food challenges confidently and effectively. Essential reading for all parents.

Book details

• Mom, Pass the Broccoli: How to Empower Your Child with Healthy Eating Habits for Life by Cari Corbet-Owen
  EAN: 9781770200876
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Becoming a parent can be an awe-ful experience – or an awful one. While there is a plethora of books about the the basic facts and joys of parenthood, not too many dredge up its darker side – the stresses and strains of finding a way to cope with an entirely new lifestyle, virtually overnight.

Lisa Lazarus and her husband Greg Fried produced a refreshingly honest memoir about their journey into unchartered territory in The Book of Jacob.

The Witness‘ Sue Segar features the author-parent duo and their “gothic parenting” book:

CAPE Town writer Lisa Lazarus doesn’t mince her words when ­explaining why she wrote The Book of Jacob (see review here) — her joint memoir of a couple’s journey into ­parenthood.

“I wrote it because I was cross, in truth I was furious — the book really burst out of me,” she said at the recent launch of the book, which was ­co-written with her husband, University of Cape Town philosophy teacher Greg Fried. “It was this feeling that sparked the book, like I’d been conned in some way.”

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Sibusiso Mkwanazi from The Citizen talks to authors Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus about the highs and lows of parenting and writing The Book Of Jacob:

Parenting books tend to be sugar-coated and considerate. Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus avoided taking this route.

They made sure The Book Of Jacob – about raising their son – stripped parenting to its bare minimum, sometimes less.

“We often felt that we had exposed too much to the reader, especially because we’re both quite private people,” the couple concedes, via e-mail.

“It was very important to us, in fact essential to our project, to be as emotionally honest as possible, to give a record of how the pregnancy and first year felt to both of us,” they say.

“We know it might offend some readers, but this isn’t our intention. If we had failed to tell the truth about our fluctuating feelings, there would have been no point in writing the book. As a result, we hope that some new parents, especially those having a tough time, might find the book resonant.

“Our hope is to make people laugh even as they are shocked at the darkness of some of the material. It is both a light and a serious book.”

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With The Book of Jacob, Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus have ushered a new kind of parenting book into the world: the “gothic parenting manual”, as Gred Fried called it, to much laughter from the crowd at the full-to-bursting Book Lounge yesterday evening.

Fried and Lazarus can laugh about it now, but they had to go through it first: the radical adjustment required after marriage metamorphoses into parenthood, and new mothers and fathers are “forced to give ourselves wholly and selflessly to another person”, to use Fried’s words. It was a difficult adjusment for the authors, but it has produced a beautifully written “travelogue and compass” – thus Lazarus – that brings the new country of parenthood into sharp relief.
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Greg Fried is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Lisa Lazarus is doing her Masters in Creative Writing. Small wonder, then, that this article on the book about their son, Jacob (pictured!), should appear in the UCT Newsroom:

A myriad of manuals and magazine articles would have it that, for first-time parents, life with a newborn has its little ups and downs but is, by and large, a straightforward affair.

Maybe not, Greg Fried and his wife Lisa Lazarus suggest in their new book, The Book of Jacob, in which they chronicle the first year of life with their son Jacob, born in 2006.

“We thought it would be challenging, but we were blown away by how difficult it was,” Fried explained. “It was a massive existential shift.”

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Oshun Books is delighted to invite you to the launch of The Book of Jacob by Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus.

The Book of Jacob tells the story of a young married couple who decide to have a baby and find that nothing had prepared them for how their lives would change. In this very honest and candid account of their baby’s conception, birth and first year, the husband-and-wife team of Greg Fried and Lisa Lazarus embark on the life-changing journey of becoming parents.
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The fallacy that new mothers have perfect lives, that they lose the weight they pick up during pregnancy and live happily ever after, came under severe and hilarious scrutiny at the launch of The Irreverent Mothers’ Handbook last week.

Authors and best friends Sam Cowen and Lee van Loggernberg celebrated the launch of their new parenting book with family and friends at the Melrose Arch Exclusive Books as part of the store’s Homebru promotion.

The book is a humorous but realistic account of the changes that new mothers are confronted with after their bundles of joy are born.
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