The Meaning Of Children: March 24th FREE on Kindle WORLDWIDE!

Well, dear friends IRL and in cyberspace (does anybody use that word anymore? It looks so 2001 doesn't it?), 

I am thrilled to let you know that the SYSTEM WORKS!

And TODAY is the day  

I GIVE my book away. 

Available to all you lovely souls with a Kindle...

OR a Kindle app, apparently!!

(Always an opportunity to learn something new...)

Already downloaded in Canada, the USA, and the UK!! (and it's not even 10 AM!!)

 

Which means, Canada, The Meaning Of Children is available FREE to you, too! 

("Even to Prime Minister Stephen Harper??!" 

"Well, only if Laureen wants to read it!")

Me!

Q: If you're giving your book away, 

does that mean it's worthless? 

A: More like priceless, I'd say. 

But don't simply take MY WORD for it!!

READ the AMAZING things 

the critics have said about 

The Meaning Of Children:

This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.

~Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail

Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.

~Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, and Regina Leader Post 

Loved your book; read it in one sitting…each [story] is told either by a child, or it’s about a child. And it’s interesting because I think depending on the age of the person reading it, you relate to different ones. But especially to feminists, growing up with it, wrestling with our beliefs, and whether it worked out or not… a lot of women that you see in this book are trapped. We were trapped by what we were brought up to believe. And then we’re trapped by the marriages we find ourselves in, and the children we have… But on the other hand, each story ends with a certain resolve. There’s that sense of okay this is my situation But. And that’s what the meaning of children is. And yet, it’s about hope. It’s about the future…

~Mutsumi Takahashi, Anchor, CTV News Montreal; Interview

A collection of 14 short stories which covers the range of experience from the point of view of children, mums, and also aging parents as well. It’s all there in this lovely little book, short stories about life in a family that might just resemble yours. A wonderful gift for mother’s day, perhaps more long lived than the usual cut flowers.

~Anne Lagacé Dowson, CJAD Radio journalist; Interview 

Akerman engages with dichotomies. Childhood is that safe, magical, carefree time and place — but it’s also risky, threatening, ominous and dangerous — full of impenetrable mystery around things seen and experienced, but beyond understanding. And if it’s not too much of a simplification or stating the obvious, life and the world are not gentle on children simply for being children…If, as Dostoevsky once remarked, and as is quoted on the collection’s frontispiece, “The soul is healed by being with children,” it is the tragedy of adulthood that we become so isolated from childhood — and what children offer us. Artfully, evocatively, Beverly Akerman’s The Meaning of Children reminds us of that.

~Darrell Squires, The Western Star

 

Beverly’s background as a scientist, MSc and twenty years as a molecular researcher, inevitably spills into the stories…characters, the settings and her style. Intelligent, objective, open-minded but not clinical, her prose is refreshing and unprejudiced. Her characters are frank and genuine...With The Meaning of Children, we get a beautifully written exposé on the meaning of life.

~Francine Diot-Layton, The Rover

Your book is filled with insight and wisdom and gorgeous moving stories...You are dazzling. (I had read “Pie” long ago. It is just as moving the second time).

~Hal Ackerman (no relation), UCLA Screenwriting Area Co-Chair and author of Stein Stoned and Stein Stung

Counter-intuitive to the title, for me these stories resonate with the sad truth of being a grownup. Life is that damn hard and just-under-the-surface tension saturates our existence. But the kids, they know what's going on. They may not understand all the details but they know the score. Akerman nails that sorrow, highlights it with unexpected humour, credits our resilience and almost never skips a beat. 

~Chris Benjamin, Author of Drive-by Saviours, on Goodreads 

And there are many, MANY more! 

I'd love it if YOU, TOO, would comment on the book at Amazon.com!

REVIEW it and LIKE it HERE or on Facebook!!

And celebrate with a slice a mah "Pie" 


or


a laugh--at Brian Mulroney's expense--


with my Joyland.ca story, 


"The Hardboiled Stress of Being Santa" (NOT in TMOC!


comments on the story welcome here).

And celebrate with a slice of my award winning

Pushcart-nominated

"Pie"

or 

a laugh on Brian Mulroney with 

"The Hardboiled Stress of Being Santa" at Joyland.ca