As author Christina Brockett puts it, The Missing Pages of the Parent Handbook is a collection of stories based on the shared experiences, insights, wisdom, and hard won lessons gained from moments when our parenting skills run out. She stresses that her book is not designed to be a guidebook or a counseling handbook. In a nutshell, this book simply shares stories or moments of parenting. Marching the parenting path, the author acknowledges that some parents feel inadequate and unprepared. All parents have their own way of raising a child and yet there is always something missing in the process. This is where the intention of the book comes in. It hopes to provide the missing pages of the other books that tackle the subject of parenting.

First and foremost, Christina Brockett is a parent herself and she sure knows what she is talking about. The Missing Pages of the Parent Handbook is full of wisdom from others who are real parents, too. The parenting challenges shared in this book are simply inspiring, especially how the parents resolve them. What makes this book more meaningful is the fact that the author provides her own words of wisdom to summarize each of the parent’s stories. Parents can definitely relate to the stories in this book. There is no right or wrong way to bring up a child. The book clearly supports this idea and it is a wonderful read because it does not preach. Instead, it simply highlights some parenting misses and failures that parents should prevent. This book clearly identifies the important factors that play vital roles in parenthood; ones that can certainly change one's life forever. Undoubtedly, Brockett writes a truly engaging and insightful book on parenting.

The Missing Pages of the Parent Handbook is the debut work by blogger, writer, and mom, Christina Brockett. This book is an anthology of shorter stories put together from a variety of sources. Each of these stories ends with what I assume are her words of wisdom. Being a parent is one of the most important jobs we will ever have. It is also one of the only jobs that we are not trained for. This playful book of short stories plays with the idea that we have been given a Parent Handbook with pages missing. Complete with shared experiences, a healthy dose of humor and irony, as well as a familiar and relatable tone and voice, this book’s a useful tool for any parent.

I love this very unique, creative idea by Brockett. Each story offers a different tone or emotional perspective sometimes and wraps up with words of wisdom which ties the theme together nicely. As a parent, I found this a bit awkward at times. It felt like it was written by and directed toward mothers predominately and while I like the anthology idea, it can feel disjointed if read front-to-back. Maybe it’s editing, but, it felt blog-like, making me wonder how some parents might react to emotionally-charged language, “your child is suffering and you missed the clues” and then later read “that’s not a toilet” (which is hilarious btw). The emotions seem all over the place -- which is what parenting feels like sometimes so I get it -- just an observation. This was a fun, informative look at parenting with great advice and empathy. If your parenting manual is missing pages, they might be in this book.