Wow! The first book of the Great Book List of 2007! Sharon recommended the book and then in a wonderful turn of events, gave it to me for the holiday. True blog confession: I started reading it before the New Year. Oh well. I'm a big cheater, I suppose.

Magic Trees of the Mind : How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence by Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson was published in 1998 (says Amazon, but I'm fairly certain the hardcover edition was published before that). The essential premise of the book is that brains are not static but can be changed through enriching activity and environment.

I started to freak out when I first began reading the book. After the chapters on brain development, the first chapter is about fetal stimulation. ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! SUPERBABIES AHEAD! I don't really like the superbaby movement. But the chapter on fetal stimulation is really well-balanced. It doesn't argue for constant fetal stimulation. Quite the opposite, in fact. It cautions that doing too much beyond what is natural for a mother to do is not advised.

Hmm...maybe it won't be so bad after all. The book continues by recommending a variety of activities for various age groups of children, after first examining the brain's development during this stage. I thought this part was pretty interesting, although I was bothered by the authors' judgment that playing music for a child was good, but that they shouldn't spend much time listening to "rap or rock." Um? Whatever.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I had been worried that by the time I was finished I would be grossly aware that Alliclaus would probably never graduate high school at the rate I was enriching her. But instead I found a book that argues that there never is a time (even now!) when it is too late to enrich environment and activities and actually improve your brain function.

I am a little disheartened however, by one of their facts. If you don't learn a language by adulthood, you are likely never going to have correct grammar in that language. So far, this remains true for me in Spanish, where everything is present, present progressive, or command forms. Oh well. It's not too late for Alliclaus, I guess.

Since the book is now more than five years old, I am interested to find out if further brain research has turned up any new information. I shall keep my eyes peeled and let you know what I find out.

You can keep up with my book list in the sidebar. I've bolded the book I'm currently reading and crossed off any books I've finished. I'll be trying to get the book reviews up on Mondays, but so far, you see how that's going.