Momof6 Book Review! This One Is For The Moms….

Lela Davidson’s

Blacklisted from the PTA!

Are you looking for a decadent beach read this summer? One that makes you laugh out loud all while nodding your head because you totally can relate to the story being told? Then you have to read this book!

When I was younger….  way before I even had visions of becoming a Mom, I used to read my mother’s Erma Bombeck books. I remember one of my favorites was titled “If Life Is A Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?”, and although I couldn’t relate to the stories from a first hand “motherhood-in-the-trenches” point of view at the time- I laughed out loud at Erma’s hilarious take on raising children and running a household. Later on, when I was pregnant, I fell in love with Vicki Iovine’s books- especially “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood.” Vicki has a gift for making her readers laugh at the craziness of taking care of those precious babies. I eagerly tore through all of Vicki’s books (it was much easier to find time to read back when I only had one little child in the house!)…. and I kept hoping that she would release a new title or two …  maybe “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Surviving Your Pre-Teen”, or “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Raising Girls”…..  but alas, it was not to be.

So when Parenting Squad editor and online pal Lela Davidson invited me to preview her newly released book “Blacklisted from the PTA”…  I was intrigued. Sure, the title sounded funny…. but could she deliver the goods? Make this seasoned pro laugh out loud at the insanity that I call my every day life? As it turned out, that’s exactly what she did. Lela shares over 60 essays in the book…  funny excerpts from her life. I loved how she was able to look at lice as a blessing in disguise, creating a path for her to get out of one of life’s ruts that sometimes get in our way. I had tears rolling down my cheeks when Lela recounted the story of getting lost on the way to the out of town hockey game…. because she had the wrong address (I did the same thing this past soccer season myself!)… and I wondered if I could ever get up the nerve to try the pole-dancing class at the Vegas strip club that Lela and her gal-pals checked out! (Many cocktails would be needed!).

But after all the laughs, I loved how Lela brought us back to why we all work so hard at this parenting thing:

“While nothing about motherhood is constant, there are split seconds when everything is in balance. If we are lucky, we grasp those moments and seal them in our hearts before the waves of life wash them away.”