Taking her 1950s poem as the basis for an exploration of constructive parent-child relationships, Nolte works with her psychotherapist friend Rachel Harris to create a warmly witty handbook for family life. Each chapter develops a line of the poem is expanded and supported with anecdotes that clarify and demonstrate its message. The result is an engaging manual of benefit to parents and educators alike. ( )

Since its publication in 1954, Dorothy Law Nolte's inspirational and educational poem, Children Learn What They Live has been published worldwide, translated into 10 languages, taught in parenting and teaching courses, distributed in doctors offices, and printed on posters and calendars. In Children Learn What They Live: Parenting to Inspire Values, authors Nolte, a teacher and lecturer on family life, and Rachel Harris, Nolte's friend and teaching associate, have taken the classic poem and fleshed it into a small gem of a book. The expanded version maintains the grace and wisdom of the original, yet adds significant insight into the process of encouraging values through example. "If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn," begins the poem (and the book), and so Nolte and Harris suggest effective ways to avoid or prevent constant criticism. As a set of guiding principals, as teaching tools, or as gentle reminders, Nolte and Harris's approach to teaching values to children encapsulates the best in parenting wisdom.