Man vs. Baby

Starred review from March 15, 2018
Finally! A straight-up, honest book about parenting. In 2015, three months after his son, Charlie, was born, Coyne made a Facebook post about everything he'd learned so far about being a new parent. Touching on all the hottest topics (labor is like magic in that it's better if you don't know how it's done; snaps on baby clothes are the bane of parents' existence; caring for a newborn is like an extreme endurance contest?where no prizes are awarded for the winner), the post went viral. In his first book, already a hit in his native England, Coyne describes his adventures in parenting through the first year of Charlie's life. And thank goodness. Irreverent and incredibly funny, this will have parents nodding along and laughing out loud as Coyne dishes on everything from how ill-prepared first-time parents are, to the joy of watching your baby discover new foods, to the awkwardness of wrestling a baby into a stroller, to avoiding old ladies in the grocery store, to how amazing life is with this new person in it. This tell-it-like-it-is memoir is certain to leave parents with the smug satisfaction that someone else understands how new babies are both angels and a-holes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)