Not breaking news, but motherhood is hard (fatherhood, too; check back next month). Of course it's also all the good stuff — rewarding, gratifying, exhilarating, heartwarming — but easy it is not; and, to borrow from The Princess Bride, "anyone* who says differently is selling something."

Mother's Day is this Sunday, May 12. Here are some recommended books, articles, and blog posts featuring moms, grandmoms, mother figures, and Mother’s Day; find plenty more about mothers (and dads, and grandparents, and other loving caregivers) over at Family Reading. 

*society, the government, ourselves, strangers, global pandemic...

• Picture Books for Mother's Day list of recommended books from the Guide/Reviews Database 

• Gaga for Grandmas by Sarah Threlkeld

• Happens to the best of us: Elissa shares a moment of pandemic realness while reading Little Women

• A Chair for My Mother: Vera B. Williams’ Boston Globe–Horn Book Award acceptance speech 

• The Adventures of Mommy Buzzkill by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (2009) 

• Review of Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism 

• Words for Flora’s Mother (and Other Imperfect Parents) (2014) and Drawing comfort from shared reading” by Megan Dowd Lambert 

• Five Questions for Alice Faye Duncan about Just like a Mama 

• Ask Family Reading: Non-wicked stepparents

• Lighting the Candle: What Words and Art Can Do by Monica Brown

• Lift Every Voice: A Matter of Choice by Shadra Strickland 

• Books in the Home: Reading with Sophie: Finding Books for a Teen with Special Needs by Catherine Shepard 

• ABC Your Way to Confidence interview with author Velena Collins Smoot

• About six weeks in... by Miriam Steinberg-Egeth and Elissa’s follow-up, Five-plus months in... 

• Mama-Llama Day 2018 

• The Straight Poop on Potty Humor by Family Reading co-parents Elissa Gershowitz and Kitty Flynn 

• Mother: Treat Her Right 

• YA mother-daughter reading recommendations 

Happy Mother's Day!