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Title: The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections
ISBN: 1590304713
Author:
Amanda Blake Soule
Publicate Date: 2008-04-01
Publish: 2008-04-01
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.84
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $10.55
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Food for the "Soule"
This is such a wonderful book!!!! Amanda Soule's book in addition to her blog has feed my "soule" in so many ways. It is truly inspiring. I have always loved being creative, but this book reminds us of the necessity of making the time on a daily basis, to do creative things.
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2: Great book to have!
Full of great, great ideas!!!!! Much more than a typical arts and crafts kind of book, this book is full of wonderful little ideas to make your kids feel special and part of the family. Things that shout, "I love you and find you worthy". I don't know how else to describe it, I love this book!
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3: Deceiving
I was really looking forward to read this book because I used to visit Amanda's blog and found it inspired and inspiring. I couldn't be more disappointed. It's not a craft book, the few project shown are obvious and not very creative in my opinion. It's not a parenting book either, it repeats the mantra "your children are creative" but does not go beyond (i.e. relate her main idea to psychology or community benefits). In some chapters she will mention "I like to do this with my family" and stops there (does not give more clues so that we can try that idea at home).
This is my opinion, I don't mean to say that many parents cannot find ideas in this book that they can do with their children. In my case, I don't feel inspired by this book and I prefer to re-read the craft books that my parents bought for me when I was a kid, or to check the parenting books in my public library to learn more about the role of creativity in my boy's development.
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4: Help For the Existential Terror of Being Home with Children
Interesting in this book is the implicit idea that domestic creativity is not a mother's sublimated or repressed need to create--think back to those childhood cliches of the mom who could have been a stockbroker or physician--instead pouring her energies into a jealously-guarded sewing room--but rather a way of being present in the moment with children, a kind of abundant ever-expanding consciousness: the more I give, the more I have. Unintentionally, this snapshot of a joyful, spiritual labor becomes a critique of the patriarchal work-ethic unseen since Mary Shelley or her mother.
I remain ambivalent yet sympathetic toward all things Waldorf. Everything depends on temperament, and my colicky babies, who became intense, high-energy children engendering a chaotic homelife, insure that needlepointing has no chance of putting down roots here. It gives me pause to consider the difference between the darker and more discordant creative energies of the eminent artist and the crafting of the creative homemaker. My children burn through things, and the last time we glued with beans and rice, it exacerbated our ant problem; I buy Prismacolors and they end up cracked and ground into the floor; I simply cannot imagine finding time to cut stencils or teach my 5-year-old to finger-knit. So, I read this in an arm-chair way, while nursing the toddler, and it supported me in feeling the greatness of my undertaking in a culture that devalues the domestic.
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5: Didn't love it
Do yourself a favor and check out her website before you order this book. If you like the sugesstions and tips she has there then you'll probably enjoy the book. I found it to be way too simplistic. She repeats a mantra of our ancestors being naturally creative because they had to, be creative and your children will be.... Just not what I was looking for.
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