We’ve been looking to the emergence– at last!– of spring both practically and metaphorically; its bluer, warmer skies a hopeful signal of the end of the winter of our collective discontent.  It is out of this desire to paint our view with a fresh coat of optimism and blithe spirit that we’ve picked three new books for Our Bookshelf right now (incidentally all written by Executive Moms we know).  All would make for good Mother’s Day gifts, too, by the way…

Do One Nice Thing: Little Things You Can Do To Make the World a Lot Nicer, by Debbie Tenzer

One of our favorite “Momorandums” of years past was one that featured a website called DoOneNiceThing.com.  It was founded by a woman named Debbie Tenzer, who decided rather than succumb to despair over all the negative news in the world, she would combat it just a little (along with the more routine “Monday blahs”) with the simple charge of doing “one nice (easy) thing” — once a week.  She created a basic website and posted a few ideas, and soon after, a pretty remarkable thing happened.  A lot of people began seizing upon this salvo, and Debbie found herself captain of a crew of nice-o-holics that spans 90 countries.  Just a couple of the results that have been achieved from this very modest origin:

• One hundred fifty thousand pounds (that’s 75 tons) of school supplies have been sent to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who give them to local children so they can study.
• Tens of thousands of cans of food, frozen turkeys, packages of pasta and other food items were donated to food banks for Thanksgiving and throughout the year.
• More than 10,000 hand-made cards have cheered hospitalized children in cities around the world from Memphis to KwaZulu Natal (South Africa).

Her first book, due out next week, arose out of the demand to capture all of the website ideas in a way that can be shared even further.  With a view toward busy people (like us), most of the suggested good deeds are paired with helpful information on how to actually get them done expediently, in some cases, as in making a donation, without ever leaving your desk. 

Do One Nice Thing: Little Things You Can Do to Make the World a Lot Nicer

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

The story of “Do One Nice Thing” and Debbie Tenzer is actually a perfect illustration of the treatise for this new book, by the authors of The New York Times bestseller, “The Power of Nice” (see too above book for thematic affinity). Here advertising agency executives Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval (with whom we once worked) lay out the case that indeed, “the little things mean a lot.”   One would hope that engaging in little acts of courtesy (i.e. holding an elevator door for someone, saying “thank you”) is intuitively a good idea to most of us.  However, at a time when the scale of our challenges and even attempted solutions seem so outsized (like BIG bailouts), there is something refreshing and encouraging about their entertaining stories that demonstrate the impact even the smallest details, gestures and actions can have in ultimately evincing change.  In their words, think “baby steps.” 

If ‘small is the new big’ by necessity, this book plants several seeds that might make you think a little differently about valuing the smaller stuff by choice– even as you still have a view toward the bigger picture.

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference

Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, by Lenore Skenazy

And now for a slightly more controversial choice– one which we hope you will embrace in the spirit in which we are recommending it.  We actually remember just about a year ago, right around the time syndicated columnist Lenore Skenazy was doing a lovely piece on one of our Executive Moms events, getting an email from her saying, “have you heard what’s been going on thanks to one of my other columns?”  Sure enough, a piece she published in the New York Sun, describing how she allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the subway alone, immediately provoked a media maelstrom.  Many hailed her for being one to push helicopter parenting back into the skies; others vilified her as ‘America’s Worst Mom” … and in the process she became an inadvertent spokesperson for a return to more relaxed approach to raising children. It’s hugely helpful to have a sense of humor (about yourself, and in general) to best appreciate her “Free-Range Commandments” such as: “Know When to Worry–Playdates and Axe Murderers: How to Tell the Difference.”   Yet underlying them all is a sincere concern that “in less time than it takes to unlock a babyproofed toilet seat…we moms and dads have changed,” partnered with an appeal that we make a return to letting kids be kids.

Whatever your personal threshold for parenting permissiveness may be, this book is filled with many healthy doses of practical perspective (Baby Kneepads–think about it) and clear facts that should help all of us ratchet down the fear factor to parenting.

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry