Huff Post Book Review of Annie Reiner's Children's Books by Dr. Cheryl Pappas
HUFFPOSTBOOKS

I Am Lilly and Penelope's Pearls are a new dynamic duo of children's books, written by Annie Reiner. Annie Reiner comes from a gold medal show biz family. Her father, Carl Reiner, is a comedy legend.

She has the chops of a writer and artist, one who has chosen to devote her career to the care of her patients as a psychoanalyst in private practice. A psychoanalyst whose focus is on early childhood. 

Who better to write books for children? 

Early childhood is a particularly vulnerable time, a time when each child's view of her or himself is a tender seed, with the roots of a lifetime at stake. What a wonderful advantage when a beautiful children's book appears to help the young child at these tender growing moments!

Both books, I Am Lilly and Penelope's Pearls, are lean in length, yet deep and resonant in their ability to communicate the often nonverbal longings of children.
What fun they are and how artfully presented. 

Here we have an infusion of art and words woven with exquisite tenderness. The voice of each book is the voice of an angel beckoning the child to come close enough to enter this most intimate conversation about having a true self. 

Annie Reiner's visual art is as vivid and alive as her writing. Shall I talk about the illustrations in her two new books for children? She could have an entire career as an illustrator. No, I won't spoil that for you, the introduction to the twinkle dance of Annie's art.

But I will tell you about her stories.

I Am Lilly is the story of a child's seeking a beginning, primitive answer to the question, "Who Am I?" Lilly, our heroine, perfectly expresses a child's longing to have adult abilities beyond the strict limitations of being a child. This fundamental theme of every small child's life, as we see in Lilly's quest, s written with heart-melting patience and jolly humor. 

One can imagine a mother or father reading these pages in seriousness to a giggling, delighted child.

"Of course I'm not Grandpa!"

"Or you, Dad!"

"Or Mom!"

"I'm me!"

If only Lilly's quandary and resolution could be every child's free, undisturbed central focus.

Penelope's Pearls is a lyrical verse about feeling afraid and "cold," which all children at times are likely to feel. The book articulates a child's pain and fear of being unloved, alone, forgotten, abandoned.

Penelope, our heroine, is the smallest penguin in the South Pole. Because Penelope is a penguin, she is supposed to be like all the other penguins who are used to the freezing cold.

Aren't we all supposed to be copies of one another as children?

Don't we all grow up wanting to belong?

Penelope is different from the others. She is constantly freezing, seeking warmth and dreaming of being in Hawaii. Reiner has created many a perfect metaphor in Penelope's Pearl's.

It is a classic.

These books are so charming that it is a safe bet that parents will find themselves inhaling Reiner's message. After all, there are patches of unfinished psychological business in all of us. 

These are stories about not just finding and loving the self, but delighting in being alive. Delight in the adult experience can be seen as a highly suspicious position, a lack of control.

Here are stories for the parent as well as the child.

The world is hungry for love.

Hurray for these books that provide children a road home.

-Dr. Cheryl Pappas

PURCHASE YOUR COPIES OF "I AM LILLY" & "PENELOPE'S PEARLS" EXCLUSIVELY AT RANDOM CONTENT.

"I AM LILLY" by Annie Reiner Available Now.
I Am Lilly

 ABOUT THE BOOK Lilly is a little girl impatient to grow up. Pretending to 

be big, however, creates complications as her imagination runs away with her.

Behind the fanciful verse of I AM LILLY is an important message about how children develop a sense of self. The discovery of who we are begins in the hearts and minds of children, and in changing times like ours, that inner foundation becomes even more essential. 

I AM LILLY presents these ideas about identity in a playful way reminiscent of Dr. Seuss. As a psychoanalyst and poet as well as author/illustrator, Annie Reiner illuminates this process of growth in a book that is fun for children and adults. Her unique paper cut-out illustrations add child-like spontaneity and humor to Lilly’s journey.

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Carl Reiner Demonstrates Augmented Reality with Jimmy Fallon

Carl Reiner and Jimmy Fallon demoed the augmented reality features of Carl's new children’s book The Secret Treasure Of Tahka Paka on NBC’s The Tonight Show with the Zappar app. This was the first time mainstream audiences were exposed to augmented reality on a major US network.

The story sees a family visit a tropical island where they experience hidden caves, tunnels, crypts, ancient curses, pirates and a secret treasure that will benefit all of us.

To have the same experience Carl had on the show, download the Zappar app onto your device and zap the image below.

Zapparapp
Carl Reiner Book Signing at Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Hollywood

During his book signing, Carl Reiner entertained a packed house at Larry Edmunds Bookshop. The event quickly morphed from Carl relaying stories from the book to a true conversation with the audience. Jeff Mantor, owner of Larry Edmunds Bookshop, presented Carl with a cake resembling the cover of his memoir "I Just Remembered" for his 93rd birthday. However, no one ate cake, because Carl loved the decorated cake so much that he didn't want to cut into it. 

Jeff Mantor presenting Carl Reiner with a birthday cake for his 93rd B-Day!

Jeff Mantor presenting Carl Reiner with a birthday cake for his 93rd B-Day!

Carl Reiner joking with a packed house at Larry Edmunds Bookshop 

Carl Reiner joking with a packed house at Larry Edmunds Bookshop 

"One Lucky Bastard" by Carl Reiner Exclusively on RANDOM CONTENT

    Most people would find it hard to believe that Brando Newman, the central male character of this epic tale, was but twenty years old when he went from being a sad, lost soul to a happy, bonafide celebrity. Some consider Brando Newman to be the luckiest man alive and others, the unluckiest.

     How lucky would you say was a man who is the sole surviving sibling in his family? Two of Brando’s brothers, Sean and Redford, were the first to go and his older sisters, Sandra and Brigitte, passed away the following day. During that short, fateful period, four of the Newman sextuplets had breathed their last breaths. It was a heartbreaking morning for their mother, Ava Newman, and for their father, Adam Pafko, her soon to be husband, whose divorce papers from his first wife had just been signed. 

    It was also a sad day for the hard working attendants in the nursery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. All were tearful when Liam, the fifth sextuplet, had to be taken off the life-support system.

    Their Dad was saddened by the loss but their mother was inconsolable. For nine months, two hundred and seventy long days, Ava had proudly and with great discomfort carried six growing embryos in her womb. For the last four months of her pregnancy, while confined to her bed, Ava read every old and new book about the care and raising of infants–from Doctor Benjamin Spock’s “Baby And Child Care” and Magaret Ribble’s “The Rights Of Infants”to the recently published “Baby 411” by Denise Field and Ari Brown.

    From the catalogues strewn on her bed, Ava had ordered six cribs, blue and pink sleepwear, dozens of blankets and sheets, six ceiling mobiles, six rubber ducks and a boxful of pacifiers. She had promised herself to do everything in her power to be the best possible mother to her six babies. 

    Now that all but one were gone, the love, dedication and hands-on mothering that Ava was prepared to give to her six babies, she would hereafter lavish on her only child, Brando. 

    Being aware of his future wife’s plan, Adam promised that he would do all in his power to help her raise their child in the manner she had outlined. 

     The two doting parents were an unbeatable team and their giggly infant was the recipient of the best kind of loving care. All went swimmingly for the family until one hot summer’s day when Adam dove into their backyard pool and swam three fast laps before suffering a fatal heart attack. This tragic event aborted the chance for Adam to give his son legitimacy. 

    From that day forward, Ava Newman channeled all her time, energy and love into the raising of the last living member of her bastard brood. 

    As Brando grew, Ava pointed out to her son how ephemeral life was and because no one could know how long they would live, she suggested that Brando become involved only in pursuits that would bring him joy, real honest-to-goodness joy!

     Fortunately, there were two things in Brando’s life that made it possible for him to take her suggestion to heart. The one thing he would never have to worry about was making a living, as his Dad bequeathed to him an enormous fortune. He now had millions in real estate and cold, hard cash but sadly, no legitimate surname. 

    As for Brando pursuing something that gave him real joy, there would not be a problem. In all the world there was but one endeavor that, if he successfully completed, would doubtlessly provoke a great big smile on his handsome face–a smile so broad that it would ricochet through his body and bring him the kind of unbridled joy his mother dreamed that one day would be his.

    To many, it may seem puerile that such unabashed joy could be engendered simply by his succeeding in doing something he had attempted every day since he had learned to read--fill in all the empty boxes in every crossword puzzle printed every day in the daily and weekend editions of the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. 

    Of late, to challenge himself, Brando has been pain-stakingly completing the New York Times puzzles on his old Smith Corona typewriter. 

    Knowing how much joy her son would have if he could solve the crossword puzzles in foreign languages, Ava Newman searched out and hired language professors to teach Brando how to read and write French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, Slovak, Irish, Scottish, Portuguese, Yiddish and Farsi –and to good avail!

    It was reported that after filling in the last square of the Sunday edition of the Farsi crossword puzzle, the smile that exploded on Brando’s face was so radiant that his flashing teeth were visible to the astronauts who were manning the international station in outer space.

FOR MORE STORIES by CARL REINER see "What I Forgot To Remember," his Spring 2015 Bio.