Books for parents

To celebrate National Storytelling Week, we publish ten useful guidelines for telling stories from Nancy Mellon's book Storytelling with Children.

Subtitled "a practical guide to relieving pain, reducing stress and restoring wellbeing", Mindfulness for Health by Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman offers a course of meditations to help you get more from life, whatever your situation. Anne Coates reviews.

We don't usually review  fiction on Parenting Without Tears but founder Anne Coates is an avid reader as well as writer and here's some of the authors and books she's discovered and enjoyed this year via Twitter.

Diane Mannion has created a comprehensive overview of the type of UK venues and activities available for children's parties in Great Places for Kids' Parties (UK) as Anne Coates discovered.

We're Going on a Bar Hunt A parody by bestselling authors Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees and illustrated by Gillian Johnson will arouse a knowing smile if not a snort of laughter in every parent, writes, Anne Coates.

Soup Can Make You Thin The Cookbook by Fiona Kirk & Jean Barr is a great source for soup recipes, a ten day flab-fighting soup diet and excellent nutrional advice, as Anne Coates discovered.

Subtitled How to Build The Character Your Child Needs To Succeed, Hilary Wilce's parenting book, Backbone, is "an excellent read for every parent and anyone working with children" writes Anne Coates.

Julia Bairstow reviews The Natural Health Bible for Women by Marilyn Glenville who offers comprehensive advice on nutritional needs as well as treating women's health problems naturally.

Anne Coates A Tale of Two Sisters  –  novella and two short stories – is on a special offer price of just 99p on Amazon. See what other readers had to say about these storeis of family relationships and sibling rivalry.

Made by Dad: 67 Blueprints for Making Cool Stuff andother great title from Workman reviewed by Jonathan Bell.

The Nature Magpie by Daniel Allen presents a cornucopia of facts, anecdotes, folklore and literature from the natural world by Daniel Allen, writes Debbi Scholes.

From the authors of the bestselling Maths for Mums and Dads, Rob Eastaway and Mike Askew, comes the next guide to get parents and teenagers through the turbulent years of GCSE maths and beyond. Louise Pollard and her husband Harvey get reading...

Charlie Plunkett has gathered the thoughts, advice and tips from parents, grandparents and experts presented in 100 words thsu the title: 100 Little Words on Parenthood.

Meanwhile I Keep Dancing is on the one hand a roller-coaster account of a very personal journey, writes Lesley Lodge, but it is also a well-researched kind of guidebook for parents of a deaf child or children – or for anyone interested in deafness in children. Its title is mystifying at first but proves absolutely appropriate once you are told it’s from a quote by Hillel: “I get up. I walk. Meanwhile I keep dancing.”

The second in the series, Parenting Without Tears Guide to Loving Discipline addresses problems families have and gives strategies for  dealing with awkward situations. For three days only this ebook is free to dowoad from Amazon.

Do you lack confidence or self-belief? Anne Coates takes a look at What's stopping You? Being More Confident by Robert Kelsey – and recommends it with confidence!

Helen Hunt, one of the excellent cooks on the PWT team, reviews The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook having tried out some of the recipes.

At a time of year when many of us are thinking of ways of improving our lives, Anne Coates reviews An Inside Job by Tricia Woolfrey and Helen Craven who have devised a programme for "simple & effective self-hypnosis for transformational change".