Rockabye: From Wild to Child

by Rebecca Woolf

Overview

Rockabye is the lively memoir of a spontaneous young city-girl who becomes unexpectedly pregnant. That city-girl is Rebecca Woolf, who at 23, after the "holy shit, I'm pregnant" realization, decides to keep the baby, marry the boyfriend (in Vegas no less), and figure out how to wed her rock n' roll lifestyle and impending motherhood.

With humor, honesty, and renegade insight, Rebecca makes the transition from life as an odd-job doing commitment-phobic, chain-smoking, irresponsible party-girl to life as a work-at-home mother with a different kind of social life. Throughout, Rebecca doesn't relinquish the token qualities of her free-spirited, pre-baby self; rebelling against both the "soccer mom," and "young mother" stereotypes, challenging herself to grow up without outgrowing her dreams, and most importantly embracing motherhood without a map.

Rockabye explores the coming together of mother and son and their mutual coming of age. How does Rebecca adapt to motherhood? By acting on instinct and maintaining a strong sense of self, breaking rules (sometimes her own) in the process and building her own adventures out of legos and alphabet blocks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580052320
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/15/2008
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Freelance writer, essayist, novelist, photojournalist, and full-time blogger, twenty-five-year-old Rebecca Woolf has worked as a professional writer since age sixteen. Her contributions to the Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul series introduced more than five million readers to her fiction, non-fiction, and poems, as well as brought her national attention as a popular guest on television, and with educational events (FOX, FOX Family, CBS, MSNBC, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Missouri Children’s Literature Festival). Her journalism has taken her around the world with eye specifically on music, travel, and sex. Rebecca has written articles for 19 UK, Transworld Stance, FW, Grace Ormonde Wedding Style, Ladies and Gentlemen Magazine, Babycenter.com, nerve.com and MSNBC. Her photography has been published internationally in web and print, including www.looklook.com and Black Book Magazine. Rebecca has also spent time as marketing and sales manager for the Los Angeles-based Entertainment Marketing Group, strategizing marketing concepts for clients that include Random House, HarperCollins, and LucasArts.

Most recently Rebecca has attracted international attention for her parenting blog, www.girlsgonechild.blogspot.com. She contributes to nerve.com’s parenting website, www.babble.com. Her column is “Straight from the Bottle with Rebecca Woolf.” EPregnancy recently contacted her and asked if she would write for them. They'll be publishing issues of Rebecca's personal blog, Girl Gone Child, as well as commissioning her for more.
Rebecca currently resides in Los Angeles where she works as a freelance writer and as well as online chat host/copywriter for the Starlight Starbright Children’s foundation. She lives with her husband, two dogs, and eighteen-month old son, Archer Sage.

Editorial Reviews

I'm young, I'm cool, I'm having a kid and I'm gonna get blog-ish about it. In 2005, 23-year-old semi-party-girl Woolf-best known at the time for her contributions to the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul series-found herself pregnant with the child of her boyfriend of four months, Hal. A truly good guy, he supported her decision to keep the baby; the couple moved in together and soon after tied the knot in Las Vegas. The remainder of her pregnancy had the same ups and downs as any other pregnancy, the only difference being that in Woolf's mind she was a renegade hipster free spirit. Her healthy baby was a boy named Archer, she and Hal fell in love with him and suddenly Woolf's priorities shifted from living in the moment to building a family. At least for the time being, all was good with the world. Mining the same territory as Neil Pollack's much ballyhooed, equally uneven Alternadad (2007), Woolf isn't above using raunch to illustrate a given situation: preparing for the birth, she notes, "My pussy is about to become a vagina. My tits are about to become breasts." The shock value wears thin, as does her overly detailed account of the minutiae of childrearing. Like the output of many good bloggers turned not-as-good book authors, the narrative is fragmented and sloppily structured. Young mothers who weren't prepared to have a baby may find comfort in this memoir, which demonstrates that other folks have not only survived but thrived in the face of an unexpected child. Those seeking a lasting piece of literature will be disappointed by this cobbled-together and smoothed-out version of Woolf's popular blog, girlsgonechild. Periodically charming but mostly pedestrian. Agent: LauraRennert/Andrea Brown Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews