‘Kim Brooks’s shifting narration may be the perfect vehicle for the crisis encircling her arrest for the momentary lapse in judgement…Brooks’s lyrical writing and largely dispassionate narration can draw parents into this larger dynamic and restore their independence to do what they believe is most beneficial as parents.’ – AudioFile Journal

This program includes a bonus interview with the writer.

One morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision to keep her four-year older son in the car while she ran right into a about Little Pets: Parenthood in age Fear store. What occurred would consume another several years of her existence and spur her to research the broader function America’s tradition of fear plays in parenthood. In Small Pets, Brooks asks, Of all the emotions inherent in parenting, is there any more common or deep than dread? Why possess our notions of what this means to be a good parent changed therefore radically? In what methods do these changes impact the lives of parents, children, and the framework of society at large? And what, in the end, does the rise of fearful parenting tell us about ourselves?

Fueled by urgency as well as the emotional intensity of Brooks’s own story, Small Pets is definitely a riveting examination of the ways our culture of competitive, anxious, and judgmental parenting provides profoundly modified the encounters of parents and children. In her personal style-by becomes funny, penetrating, and often illuminating-which has dazzled millions of enthusiasts and been called ‘dazzling’ by NY Times Publication Review and ‘gorgeous’ from the National Book Critics Group, Brooks gives a provocative, powerful portrait of parenthood in America and phone calls us to examine what we most value inside our relationships with our children and one another.

Praise for Little Animals:

‘Small Pets interrogates how exactly we weigh risk as parents, how exactly we judge one another’s parenting and what the expenses may be – not just to parents, but to children, as well -of a tradition of constant monitoring.’ – NY Times Book Review

‘Part memoir, component history, component documentary, part impassioned manifesto…it might be the most important book about being a parent that you will ever go through.’ -Emily Rapp Dark, New York Occasions bestselling writer of The Still Point from the Turning World

“Small Pets by Kim Brooks, came at me like a large exhalation, a release of so much of the stress I’ve carried around since [becoming] a mom.” – Rebecca Makkai, writer of The Great Believers