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After checking out several excellent books from the series, I have a new habit: reserving new National Geographic books from the library every week. I can’t help it; it’s a compulsion. Each and every book proves to be just as impressive if not even more so than the previous book, and even if we don’t read them my six-year-old and I end up gazing at the photos and reading the captions for a very long time.

The National Geographic Kids Beginner’s World Atlas is no different from these other books. It has gorgeous full-color pictures, plenty of animals and maps for kids to check out, and dozens of fact boxes about land regions, plants, water, climate, and more. Some of the photos are simply breathtaking!

The complaint I have, however, is about the display of people. For example, in the North America photo, we have a girl from the Crow Tribe in Montana dressed up in some braids, a special dress, and a bit of paint on her face. I’m not an expert, but the native people I’ve met across the country tend to wear jeans and t-shirts like everyone else. Isn’t this sort of a trope? And in no way does this young girl represent the entirety of North America—which is an extremely unfortunate fact, considering how native people were wiped out by the ancestors of the majority of the people who do live here, but it is true nonetheless.

Canada is represented by an Inuit boy and a hockey player; in Australia, an aborigine boy. It seems like the makers of the book went out of their way to get as many tribal photos as they could, giving the world a false feeling of color. I get that these representations are often the most interesting—and indeed, I want to learn more about all of these different people and so does my kiddo—but I just think it would have been more accurate to depict countries with either a face that might be commonly seen (AKA in jeans or whatever!) or a variety of people whom you might see representing many different cultures when applicable.

Otherwise, this is really an excellent first atlas, especially since it helps explain how to use an atlas in the first place—something that many of us never even learned in our lives. I remember pouring over the back contents of flags and countries in my social studies book, yearning to learn more about the world as we learned the same old (and it turns out, false) history of Christopher Columbus every year. Now that I’m no longer in school, I can—and so can my daughter.

There are so many conditions, gifts and simple states of being in the world that when you are introduced to one that is completely unfamiliar to you, it’s both amazing and not. You sort of already expect there to be many more types of people in the world than you already know about—but when you discover something new, you’re still kind of in awe, right?

In the case of A Mango-Shaped Space, the condition is known as synesthesia. People with synesthesia often associate certain senses with numbers, sounds, letters and other things. The lead character in the book, Mia, sees colors and shapes for letters, numbers, and sounds, for example. Others might smell a certain scent when they hear some words, or they might experience a taste in their mouths.

People with synesthesia can experience challenges with many things in life—such as math skills, which were difficult for young Mia in the book due to their various colors—but the condition can also result in a more vivid life experience altogether. Though some medications can help “mask” symptoms—and symptoms can sometimes dilute or disappear during severe stress or trauma to return again later—most people with synesthesia say they would rather have it than not.

The book itself is very straight-forward and accessible to tweens and teens; I think most kids over eight could enjoy and understand the book. Indeed, I wonder if part of the reason why it was written was to provide something for young children who have this condition to have something to relate to and know they are not alone. I can’t imagine what it would be like to experience life in a completely different way from others and for people to call you crazy or not believe you when, in fact, what you are experiencing affects many more people—and is documented for proof.

I really enjoyed Mia’s story and would recommend such a book to any children’s book club or reading program. There’s no violence—though there are a couple of mature subject matters, such as youth kissing, death and pet death; I don’t think these warrant the big bad parental bans anywhere, but I guess you never know!—and I think the material is both poignant and appropriate, as well as moving and interesting. Kids will enjoy the book as they learn more about people around the world, family, and friendship.

You want to be a mom and “have it all?” I’ll tell you what. You can do it. You can have it all. You can also have an ulcer while you’re at it.

I’ve had it all. I had a lucrative career working full-time at salary level pay working from home, while attending a state university full-time, while being a full-time mom who never used a sitter. Pretty impressive, right? I even published a novella during this time.

Of course, I didn’t read much. If you know me, you know reading makes my soul breathe. For two years, the only books I read were textbooks for chemistry and other courses and picture books to my infant. I didn’t sleep much, either. In fact, I slept so little that I sometimes hallucinated; I saw things like giant bugs climbing the walls. I fell a couple of times, too, just walking around my apartment. I slept so little that my doctor told me it was the equivalent of doing drugs.

But I had it all! I had the marriage and child, the school and career, the money and—um, yeah, blood poisoning, heart issues, and a three-day hospital stay by the age of 26 from stress, lack of sleep, weight gain (staying up all those nights took a whole lotta sugar and caffeine, know what I mean? It also didn’t allow for any time to exercise) and rapid weight loss from crash dieting, and probably sheer desperation.

I was also miserable. I took care of my poor baby—who had special needs, so you can throw in the fact that I also did a couple of hours of physical and developmental therapy with her each day to that impressive list above, both with and without her team of therapists and psychologist! Not to mention, of course, the housework I did, as well as the care for an elderly relative we lived with for several years—in a zombie-like, always-exhausted state.

This means that I recall very little of those first three years, something I will never, ever get back. My job began as something creative and remarkable—my dream come true—but rapidly evolved into a weekendless, joyless litany of minutia. My flowing creativity and love for the nonprofit work I did was gradually warped into gasping, striving to stay afloat, sometimes crying in the shower, always being behind chaos.

My marriage was strained. I had no time for family; they began to all resent me when I said no, I can’t attend again, I have to work. And when I did attend an event, I was so exhausted and in need of plain rest time that no one wanted to be around me anyway. I wish I could go back in time and give this me a smack in the face—or at least a daily “cut off” time after which I would not work, would only rest, and would take two days off a week—minimum.

“Having it all” really means just doing it all—being the domestic caregiver and cleaner and organizer, the person who plans the doctor visits and the holidays and gifts and laundry and everything, the person who cares for the children and spouse but never the self, as well as having a career and bringing in half of the income. In short, I’m not so sure we achieved “women’s liberation,” but perhaps simply an additional job on top of the one that was always so charitably bestowed upon us.

We need to change “having it all” to simply “having what we want.” If every human, male and female, could simply achieve this goal, I think we could have equality and happiness—which are really the elusive states here—while we abandon some misconstrued notion of “it all.”

First, let it be known that I do NOT like the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise. I loved the cartoon movie that came out in the 80s; it was the first movie I saw in theaters, I think! I could watch that one every day, even though Modern Me has a few issues with it.

The new movies, however, have royally sucked. My daughter loves them, which is, of course, why we watch them. We don’t buy them—she doesn’t love them as much as she loves, say, Up or The Princess and the Frog—but we did keep the copy of Chipwrecked from the library after we watched it. Normally we return things immediately, but we’re keeping this one until it’s due because—well, it’s pretty darn cute!

The rodents get separated from Dave while on a family vacation—via one of Alvin’s brilliant plans, of course—and hilarity pretty much ensures as they run into a woman who’s been on the island way too long, the fun-filled alternative side of Simon, and a general role reversal of all of the chipmunks. It may not sound like a great film—indeed, it’s not great, but it’s fun, and it’s the one movie in the entire franchise that I actually didn’t mind watching.