...and make her bring her guitar!
I don't know if it's because Carolyn is Canadian, or what--but this book (and the CD) deserves a much larger audience that it's had. Carolyn writes like a dream--and by that I mean not "dreamily," but like any wordsmith's best dream of making the craft work, making the words sing (like a world-class songwriter, which Carolyn happens to be), and telling a story without making the structure intrude. Carolyn, on only her second go-round in the prose business, has proved herself as able a storyteller on the printed page as she is on the concert stage or coming through your stereo speakers. She's tender, she's funny--and the beauty of it is, you don't have to be a mother or even a dad to love these revelations of a parent's hopes and heartaches.
You only have to be alive.
Get a whole bunch of these and pass them out to everyone you know who's having a baby, thinking of having a baby...or whoever's been a baby at some point. I think that's just about all of us.
(And while you're at it, check out her music. The books are good--exceptional-- but the music will knock you over. Plus you can't read and drive at the same time. It's mighty dangerous.)