Sources

Any book in print should be available from any "real" bookstore by special order--if you have the author's name or title, the bookstore's copy of "Books In Print" should help you to find any other information you need. In many cases, however, discount chains do not even attempt to provide all books in print; I've had the worst luck in searching for books at a local SuperCrown.

A good source for children's books and some stuff for parents is the Chinaberry Book Service (2780 Via Orange Way Suite B, Spring Valley CA 91978; phone 1-800-776-2242). The reviews are quite helpful, and the parenting books are few in number but generally among the best. One annoying thing is that they make false claims for the occasional 'alternative' product, such as those laundry disks which are purported to use 'quantum mechanics' to substitute for detergent, when in fact they clean no better than water alone. Still, they carry many excellent books.

Rosie Hippo's Wooden Toys carries a fine selection of the rarer parenting books, such as "Without Spanking or Spoiling"; Their number in the US is 1-800-385-2620; their address is Rosie Hippo's Wooden Toys, Rosehip Farm, Inc., 344 Bay Ridge, P.O. Box 2068, Port Townsend WA 98368.

Animal Farm is a sweet little catalog of non-competitive games and an interesting and thought-provoking selection of parenting books.

Free Spirt Publishing has a catalog with excellent parenting books (attention--parents of gifted and talented or learning disabled children, especially!), as well as the kind of self help books for older kids I wish I'd had, at that age. Call 1-800-735-7323 in the US; in Minnesota or outside the US, call 1-612-338-2068. Their address is 400 First Avenue North, Suite 616, Minneapolis MN 55401-1724. They appear to have an e-mail address: help4kids@freespirit.com.

For recordings and books related to music, such as the wonderful Rise Up Singing, you can order from the nonprofit woman's music company Ladyslipper at 1-800-634-6044; the address is Ladyslipper, Inc., PO Box 3124-R, Durham, NC 27715.

One of several large on-line bookstores may be found at Amazon books; their search capabilities are extremely helpful. Links have been added throughout this FAQ to books in Amazon; this provides access to additional information on many books, and on whether or not a book is currrently in print. If you were to elect to use these links to add a book to your Amazon.com shopping cart, you would be charged the same discounted price as usual, but this web site would also obtain a small "kickback" fee from Amazon if you were to ultimately buy the book. While it would be nice to have this fee to help support the costs of maintaining this web site, this FAQ is not here to be a money-maker, and I am not trying to persuade any readers to use the Amazon bookstore if they would not already have done so. (Total theoretical revenues, not actually seen yet, currently stand at $2, orders of magnitude less than I've spent on this site.)

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to contributors, including but not limited to:

Joanne Cook
Kalen Delaney
Laura Dolson
Laura Floom
Helen Gorman
Kate Gregory (Kate has a list she updates
      every year or two; her 1991 edition is included here, somewhat
      fragmented to fit under the different categories.)
Judith H.
Nuhad Jamal
Peter Kaminski
Lisa S. Lewis
Diane C. Lin
Heather Madrone
Dorothy Neville
Pat  
Steve Samuels 
Kate Smith 
Clarke Thacher
Shirley Traite
Judy Leedom Tyrer
Marilyn Walker 

Earlier contributions are not individually attributed to their contributors,
as that is the way the list was originally started by Judy Tyrer. Later
I made an effort to include correct attributions, but cannot
correct the older material. Please accept my apologies, and send me
corrections, if your words appear here uncredited.