Book Review: Listen to My Heart

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Listen to My Heart

Author: Kathie Lee Gifford

Author's charity, which this book was created to support: http://www.kathieleegifford.com/charity/the-association-to-benefit-children/

Date: 1995

Publisher Lambchop Productions

ISBN: 0-7868-6075-8

Length: pages not numbered; I counted 108

Illustrations: color drawings by Sandra Forrest

Quote: “Mom, you know what else wouldn’t be good to sit on? A flower! It wouldn’t be good for the flower!”

This is a terribly, terribly cute celebrity family memoir, about Kathie Lee Gifford’s children saying the darnedest things.It’s not a how-to-parent book, or even so much of a funny one. Of course, since Gifford was already rich and famous, her cute little coffee-table book was dedicated to a charity—“The Cody Foundation for Cassidy’s Place, a home for HIV-positive and crack-addicted children.” That means Listen to My Heart was put together for one single purpose: to stir up your oxytocin (the hormone associated with feelings of motherly love, and yes, men have it and are healthier for having a good supply of it) to motivate you to chip in money.

Currently registered as "The Association to Benefit Children: Cody's House and Cassidy's Place," Gifford's charity is still in operation. If you buy Listen to My Heart here, you send $5 per book + $5 per package (you could fit multiple copies or a few other books into the package) + $1 per online payment, to the appropriate address at the bottom of the screen, and we send $1 to the charity in aid of which this book was written. Or you could just send some money to the charity.

What else do you need to know? Kathie Lee Gifford is one of America’s leading sweethearts. If you like her TV shows, you’ll love her baby book. She tells personal stories about herself and her friends, notably including Betty and Gerald Ford, but not really offensive ones. She shares a gross-out joke with little Cody, and re-shares it with readers. She mentions her religious practice, but doesn’t really preach. It takes a lot of discipline and planning to be as “spontaneous” as Kathie Lee Gifford is, and this book is a masterpiece of Mrs. Gifford’s art.