The Lunch-Box Chronicles Notes from the Parenting Underground [Paperback]

ChildMagazine Best Book of the Year

For me, parenting is like dieting.  Every day, I wake up filled with resolve and good intentions, perfection in view, and every day I somehow stray from the path.  The difference is with dieting, I usually make it to lunch. . . .

   With the candor and often hilarious outlook that have made her a beloved commentator on NPR, Marion Winik takes the reader on an unforgettable journey through modern parenthood, with all of its attendant anxieties and joys.
        A single mother with two small boys, Winik knows exactly what she's talking about, from battles over breakfast and bedtime to the virtues of pre-packaged food and weightier issues like sex education and sibling rivalry. Part memoir and part survival guide,The Lunch-Box Chroniclesis an engaging philosophy of parenting from a staunch realist, who knows that kids and their parents both will inevitably fall far short of perfection, and that a good enough mom really is, in fact, good enough.

Take Erma Bombeck, add the obsession of a single mother with two boys... and you have Marion Winik, as companionable writer as a crazed parent ever found. -The New York Times Book Review

Marion Winik proves as able a bard for her generation as Erma Bombeck was for hers... Funny, warmhearted, and chock-full of moments of instant recognition. -Newsday

[H]ilarious and wrenching, it's about being a parent, but it's also about so much more: love, survival, transcendence—and macaroni and cheese. - Anne Lamott, author ofOperating Instructions

Marion Winik has been a regular commentator on Nation Public Radio'sAll things Consideredsince 1991. Her writing appears regularly in magazines, newspapers and online.  She is the author of bothTellingandFirst Comes Love(both available from Vintage Books).US