This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel is by far one of the best books I have read all year. It may come in at the top, but I'll reserve that judgement for another two months. Rosie and Penn are the parents to five rowdy, bright, wonderful boys. Their home is a little unconventional: Rosie works full time as an ER doctor and Penn stays home with the children and works on his novel. They live in Madison, Wisconsin, in an old farm how that is open and relaxed enough to allow rollerblading indoors and all kinds of baking, even by four-year-olds, in the kitchen. The family does homework together and plays together and everything about this family makes you, as the reader, love them. Rosie and Penn are thrown a bit when one day, their youngest son Claude asks if he can really be anything when he grows up. What does he want to be? A girl.

This is the story of a family struggling to know how to raise their children, how to love them and prepare them for the world in the best way possible. This is also the story of parents muddling through, sometimes getting it right and sometimes not. Regardless of how you feel about what some consider a controversial topic, you cannot help but love this family and feel sympathy for the difficult situation in which they find themselves. The writing is smart and touching and funny and fantastic. In addition to the main story, we also get to hear the long running fairy tale that Penn tells his children every night. This book is nothing short of magical. I love it so much and I know it will become one of my most recommended books.