Caroline Grant's Blog

I'm working on a trilogy of related columns right now, covering three documentaries about different paths to motherhood and changing attitudes toward how we become mothers. The first, Adopted, looked closely at two families who adopted daughters from China. The third column, on the documentary Sunshine, will explore one family's history of single motherhood. And the second column, on Deirdre Fishel's film, Sperm Donor X, is up now at Literary Mama. Here's an excerpt:

I must have been in...

Come out and join me, Lisa Harper, and Nicki Richesin reading some of our favorite springtime picture books! We'll be at Books, Inc., Laurel Village on Thursday, May 6th, at 6 PM. The bookstore supplies the popcorn, we supply the stories, you supply the kids.

More details here.

As I have written before, Eli cares for his stuffed animals quite devotedly. Like any good parent, he tucks them into bed at night and makes sure they’re cozy, he throws birthday parties for them, and worries about their eating habits.

Big Doggie, the biggest of the stuffies, is also the oldest of the stuffies and recently we learned that he has a job. Every night at bedtime, Big Doggie eats a snack from his new bowl and heads off to his job, typing on the computer and talking on the phone (happily he doesn’t leave the bed, and the work seems not to interfere with Eli’s repose). So I shouldn’t have been surprised the other day when Eli announced that Big Doggie was getting married. “Who is he marrying?” I asked. It was a stumper. Eli glanced around his bed, then ran to the basket of other stuffies and started pawing through the pile. He pulled out the stuffed snowman Ben made at a friend’s house a couple years ago and held it up, laughing. “Big Doggie can’t marry the snowman; he would melt!” He rejected the kangaroo, the otter, the two frogs, duck and many others before finally coming to a dachshund about half Big Doggie’s size. Right behind that one there was a smaller dachshund. “Perfect!" Eli crowed, "A bride and a baby!”

So, we had the players, but then Eli realized we needed a wedding feast. “Cookies! Chocolate chip cookies!” Easy enough, and more fun when I remembered that we have lots of cookie cutters to make the wedding dessert more special. We picked out three dogs (a lab like Big Doggie and two different dachshunds), a bone and a heart. We picked flowers from the garden.

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We dressed the happy couple in special outfits, including collars for their wedding rings, and we deptutized the mooses as ring bearers:

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The preparations wound up taking a couple days, as we kept getting interrupted by little details like school and bedtime, but when you figure how long engagements tend to be these days, and how expensive weddings can be, I think we did pretty well. And afterward, the happy couple jetted off to Hawaii (under a living room chair) for their honeymoon, while the rest of us finished off the wedding feast.

As I have written before, Eli cares for his stuffed animals quite devotedly. Like any good parent, he tucks them into bed at night and makes sure they're cozy, he throws birthday parties for them, and worries about their eating habits.

Big Doggie, the biggest of the stuffies, is also the oldest of the stuffies and recently we learned that he has a job. Every night at bedtime, Big Doggie eats a snack from his new bowl and heads off to his job, typing on the computer and talking on the...

Last year, I wrote about Pamela Tanner Boll's inspiring documentary about artists who are also mothers; if you haven't seen it yet and are in the New York area, here's a great way to see the movie, participate in a lively conversation about art and parenting, and do good -- all at the same time!


"This film is not about being a woman or being a woman artist, but rather how to be a human, how to find your true place in life."

Join us for an evening of inspiration, collaboration and art

Wine...

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It looks the same upside down and right side up.

On its side, it's the symbol for infinity.

It's a power of 2.

It's a homophone (remember the old joke, Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine.)

It's a Fibonacci number.

It's the number of notes in an octave.

It's the number of planets in the solar system (sorry, Pluto, we still miss you).


It's the age of my firstborn son. Happy birthday, Ben!


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I had the opportunity to return to View from the Bay last week to speak about the importance of reading aloud, and also to share some children's books chosen by my son's school librarians. It was hard to stick to my allotted five minutes! Here's the clip:

I had the pleasure of appearing again on View from the Bay again last week, this time speaking about the importance of reading aloud to our kids. It was hard to keep to my allotted five minutes! Here's the clip:

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People write to me at Literary Mama fairly regularly, asking me to help them promote this or that event, and most of the time the events don't have much to do with the mission of Literary Mama. But when I heard from the folks at LitWorld about World Read Aloud Day, it was easy to offer our help, especially since it means I get to a) read aloud to kids (including my own!) and b) go on tv again!

So join me on World Read Aloud Day, March 3rd, at Books, Inc. in San Francisco's Laurel Village, from...

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"Nearly 60% of Americans are personally connected to someone who is either adopted, has adopted, or has relinquished a child to be adopted."
-- Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

I read this statistic, which runs at the end of Barb Lee's documentary, Adopted (2008), and started counting in my head: ten cousins, two college roommates, one graduate school friend and two colleagues who are adopted, plus four other friends who have adopted children themselves. Two of my sons' four cousins are ...