Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own

by Erma Bombeck, Bil Keane, Bil Bombeck, Erma; Keane

Book Overview

The 18 high-interest leveled readers in this series feature the lives of prominient figures who have overcome adversity to achieve success. This series is a great way to improve the reading skills of reluctant readers and those reading below grade level. Each title contains a table of contents and glossary of unfamiliar or challenging words. Motivate and inspire students with great nonfiction books.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385024630
• ISBN13: 9780385024631
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One way to deal with the stress of parenting teens is to laugh at the consequences, this book helps

The focus here is on the teenage child and with four in my blended household, I have a great deal of experience in dealing with them. My situation is nowhere near as bad as Bombeck relates, in many ways she exaggerates the situation for comedy effect. Yes, teenagers still listen to unusual and raucous music and with the advent of the MP3 player, do so all the time. In fact, the greatest status symbol now is whether you have an iPod or a generic MP3 player. Bil Keane is a cartoonist who contributes the visual effects to the book. He is best known for his "Family Circus" cartoon strip and it is easy to recognize similarities between the characters in his strip and those in the cartoons in this book. Together, they have developed an amusing look at the teen years from the perspective of a parent. Eventually, you do get through it and then have the opportunity to look back and appreciate how the circumstances were never as bad as you thought they were going to be. Growing up is hard, yet being the parent of a child growing up is in some ways even harder. Although this book was written in 1971 and so much has changed since then, the fundamental problems of the teen years have not. Peer pressure and the desire to fit in are as strong as ever and one of the best ways to cope is to attack the problem with humor. The combination of Bombeck and Keane do that really well, so when your children stress you out, one way to deal with it is to make fun of it with this duo of humorists.

so funny and witty.......

For anyone is a parent of a teenager, or anyone who is interested in reading more about that complex, and turbulent dynamic, this book is for you. I first read this book when I was eleven years old, and it just got me reading and enjoying more of Erma Bombeck's unique and broad brand of humor. To top that off, the little comic interludes, illustrating themes and common day-to-day interactions between parents and children, are drawn beautifully by Bil Keane, who went on to illustrate the successful comic strip, "Family Circus," for years. Whether Erma Bombeck is taking on housekeeping, driving lessons, or hairstyles, she is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. Granted, this book was originally written in the 1970s and there is a slightly dated hippie quality to the look of the teenagers in this book, the themes ring true today, as much as thirty years ago. Parents and their teenage children speak different languages, diverge greatly in their tastes in music, friends, romantic partners and lifestyle. Yet, God has put them together, to teach one another lessons in adversity, communication (or lack thereof) and exasperation! Bombeck's talent shines brightly here. I also reccomend you check out "Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession," "The Grass is Greener Over the Septic Tank," "If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I Doing in the Pits?", and "When You Begin to Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home." They are also great examples of her comedic writing, and warm insight into life and its day-to-day mini-disasters!

Laughter Is the Best Medicine for Being a Teenager's Parent

If you like funny stories that ring true about being a parent, Erma Bombeck's the writer for you. If you want hysterical drawings of teenagers, Bil Keane is your cartoonist. They create a championship team of angst-relieving humorists for parents waiting up until 4 a.m. for the teenager who was supposed to be home at 10:30 p.m., and cannot be located.The book was originally written about 25 years ago, so you will occasionally need to go back in time to understand the humor. The hair stories are all like that. Suffice to say, female and male teenagers wore very long hair then. It was often difficult to tell to which sex a person belonged. The humorous possibilities of this are wonderful, and well exploited.I had the opportunity to meet Ms. Bombeck many years ago, and found her to be as self-effacing and interesting in person as her writing shows her to be. Much humor in books is aimed at putting down someone else. But Ms. Bombeck mixes lots of love with her humor, and the humor is often aimed at herself and other adults. That's what makes this book and its humor so heart-warming, even though she and Mr. Keane share eloquently about the frustrations of being a parent (especially a Mom).If you are not familiar with her humor, it has a lot in common with slapstick. She takes an ordinary situation that often will not run smoothly (like teaching one's child to drive) and piles every single thing that ever goes wrong into one, nonstop, fast-paced incident. As disaster after disaster occurs, you find yourself overloaded with emotional discharges that can only be relieved by a good belly laugh. Think of it as an innoculation against frustration when a less challenging incident occurs.The topics covered are pretty encyclopedic. You will learn about selective memory (forgetting to do chores, but remembering what one received at a certain age if a sibling gets more), driving lessons (how the other parent undermines the more cautious one), the futility of trying to keep up with swiftly changing styles (even the Mom who tries to keep up cannot, because she doesn't know how the styles changed during that day at school), how the telephone disappears until the teenagers leave the house, teenagers' fear of being embarrassed by their parents, the agonies of family vacations, the fall of parental intelligence as the teenagers get older (in the eyes of the children), loud music, money, proms, braces, boy or girl friends, worrying, and arguments.Ms. Bombeck had three children, and uses them as her source of material. What she does especially well is capture the busyness of being a parent. When a special opportunity to make a connection comes along, it always seems like there are 6 other things that have to be done simultaneously. Her indirect message is to get rid of the busyness and focus on the connections on those rare occasions when they arise. I heartily agree with that.The chapters are done in an amusing point-counterpoint style. The point is t

Two seamless brands of humor

Honestly, darlinks, I just love this book. Famed columnist Erma Bombeck teamed up with "Family Circus"'s Bil Keane to create an unusual and enjoyable book.Both of them write/draw columns/cartoons that talk about raising teenagers in the 70s (when this was originally published, I think) Keane's cartoons are not "Family Circus" in later years, but instead are sometimes-surreal glimpses of seventies parents and kids, such as the girl who has what appears to be a palm-tree-like growth of hair on her head, or the boy carrying a restaurant's worth of food to his room.Ms. Bombeck covers adolescent embarrassment, sex talks with parents, haircuts of the time, and so on. Her columns are funny, witty, and most of all, ACCURATE--especially with Keane's cute cartoons. Too bad it's such a short book--I could read this stuff forever.

Clever, and very substantial

There are books to take to the beach, and there are books to snuggle up with on a cold winter night. I think this Keane/Bombeck effort is a rainy-day book, the kind of day you wonder whether or not you should have sent the kids to school with rain slickers. Oh and make sure you've got a good cup of coffee and a doughnut when you're reading this book. Or maybe wheat toast.