Recommended Reading: Rockabye

I'm wrapping up these two weeks of boy birth wonderment with some recommended reading on a similar theme. Rockabye: From Wild to Child is Rebecca Woolf's 283-paged ode to her son, Archer. Inherent in his story is hers, as she articulates in a way that I've kept close to my heart since I first read the sentiment on her blog: "I am not and never will be defined by motherhood, but I will wholeheartedly admit that motherhood has inspired and enabled me to define myself."

Rockabye has all the makings of a passionate memoir about the unique experience of raising a child as a young mother in Los Angeles: making a baby, making a marriage, making friends, making it as a writer, and making peace with all the loose ends.

(This) Girl's Gone Child was one of the first blogs I stumbled across right before I started my own over two and a half years ago. I was immediately drawn in by the way Rebecca thinks and the way she conveys that process on the computer screen. She knows how to turn a phrase. She knows how to make people laugh. She knows how to live so she has something to write about.

I have a friend from college named Amy who started reading Rebecca's blog after finding the link on my own. She was sucked in the same way I was. When Rebecca made the announcement on her site that she had signed with a book publisher to write a memoir, Amy was ecstatic.

"I was telling everyone at work that I have a friend who's writing a book," Amy said to me. "I know that's bizarre, since I don't actually know her. I don't even leave comments on her blog. But she feels like a friend."

Rebecca's brutally honest confidence is friendship through her blog, and it's the same rapport that ties together each page of Rockabye: From Wild to Child. So check out her memoir, and I know you'll be waiting with me and Amy to find out what's next. A little bird told me that Rebecca's got some brilliant fiction on the books, and I can't wait to get my hands on all of it.


. . .But you don't have to take my word for it. See what some other reviewers from The Parent Bloggers Network have to say about Rockabye.