Description:
Some things you learn too late. Raising boys is most of them.
Amber McClain Shaw didn't grow up with brothers. She didn't play team sports, understand the infield fly rule, or know what to do when a child announces he needs a jockstrap by Friday. What she had instead was a front-row seat to three boys growing up - and enough material to fill two books.
If I Knew I Was Going to Have Three Boys is a humor essay collection that spans the early years: Little League disasters, a genuinely moving funeral for a pet rat, the specific chaos of mother-son dinner dates, and first crushes observed from an uncomfortable distance. Each essay is chronological, specific, and told with the dry affection of a woman who loved every minute of it and would also like to be compensated.
For anyone who has raised a boy, loved a boy, or survived being a kid themselves - this book will make you laugh out loud, and then call your mother.
Volume 1 of 2. Volume 2 available now.
Brief description: Amber McClain Shaw is a writer, teacher, and the author of the two-volume humor essay collection If I Knew I Was Going to Have Three Boys, I Would Have Paid More Attention in PE. She teaches wild writing - a practice of unfiltered, voice-first storytelling - through her studio, Spilled Ink Writing, in San Jose, California. Her essays explore the places where ordinary life gets strange: raising three boys who grew up anyway, living between a city and the coast, and finding the funny in moments that are also, if you look closely, a little heartbreaking. She is currently at work on a memoir. She lives in San Jose with her husband and their anxious dog.