Last week my first baby was born. I knew then that it's the perfect time to finish reading Lynda Fassa's "Green Babies, Sage Moms: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Your Organic Baby". The book is definitely for moms (and those who plan to be moms), but during the reading I found out that dads can also enjoy it and learn a thing or two on how be sage and green up their babies.The book is guide "to becoming an empowered, environmentally conscious and raising healthy children" as the cover says. The author Lynda Fassa is very far from the crunchy granola type many still associate with green moms. She is a former Ford model, who founded Green Babies, an organic cotton clothing company, after she gave birth to her first (out of three) child and read an article in the NYT about farmers who abandon cotton in favor of growing organic cotton. There she started her green journey.
What Lynda found out and you can learn very quickly from the book is that going green equals becoming healthier and providing yourself with a better quality of life. This equilibrium becomes highly significant when it refers to the people you care the most about: your children.
The book is dedicated to the periods of time where the children are most vulnerable - during pregnancy and as little babies.
The first half of the book is focused on pregnancy - from the right food you should eat through the cosmetic products you should use to the safe way to clean the house to get it ready for the baby. This part is very women-oriented, but I still found there interesting information, which was relevant for me, like the various uses of my favorite wonder-material baking soda (who knew you can use it also as a laundry detergent?).
The second half of the book is full with great advices regarding newborns and babies. As I said, now that I'm a new father, I found these issues very relevant - for example, the diaper dilemma: how you do you do it without significantly reducing your comfort level and at the same time not harming the environment? I still didn't find the golden path, but the book, and it's the same for many other topics covered on it, does a great job by bringing you all the options and gives you to choose the right one for you - who knew there are so many options other than just disposable and cloth diapers to choose from?
One of the things I liked about the book is the dozens of stories on green products brought by the people who established and run the companies that sell them - these are not free ads but truly interesting stories about their green journey and how they started with their products. For anyone who is interested in green business in general this is fascinating stuff.
You can find these days many guides to green living, but I think that the focus of this book, the information that was carefully collected, the experience of the author as a mother of three and her approach which I found both positive and open-minded make this book a great guide to any mom or dad that would like to have a green compass that will guide them during the pregnancy and the early years of their children.
Would you like a free copy of the book? from now on we'll give away every copy of a book we receive to review and this book is going to be the first one we'll start with! All you need to do is to add a comment with an answer to this question: what's the most important thing I should do to keep my baby's ecological footprint to minimum? (and don't forget to include your email please..)
We'll choose from all the comments we'll receive to this post by Friday (6/6/08), 12pm EST the one we like the most and send the happy winner the review copy of the book.
Author: Lynda Fassa
Publisher: New American Library, a Division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Publisher: New American Library, a Division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Published on: January 2008
Pages: 256
Official Website: http://www.greenbabies.com/catalogue/gbsm.htm
Pages: 256
Official Website: http://www.greenbabies.com/catalogue/gbsm.htm
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Raz @ Eco-Libris
