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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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HOW TO BE A FAMILY

Dan Kois

How I Dragged My Kids Around the World to Find a New Way to Be Together

A smart and self-deprecating memoir by Slate editor and journalist Dan Kois on leaving home for one year with his wife and two daughters to live in four different places (New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas) to learn what it takes to be a family.
What is the secret to a harmonious life for a busy family of four? Slate editor Dan Kois sets out with his wife and daughters on a journey around the world to learn what it takes to be a family.

Dan Kois and his wife always did their best for their kids. Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family --Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters, Lyra and Harper-- could be found each searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together?

In this eye-opening and heart-warming book, Dan Kois decides that - while he still has time - he is going to try and find a way for his family to work together to achieve their own and each other's dreams. Having just returned from a reporting trip to Iceland, where he was won over by the serenity of the landscape and the ample time that families seemed to have with one another, he decides to find other places on the map that might offer he and his wife and kids the chance to live away from home and closer together. The goal? To get out of the rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live, in the hopes that their family might see themselves and their family differently.

HOW TO BE A FAMILY takes readers inside the Kois family dynamic, at turns hilarious and eye-opening, and across the world as we travel with them to the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Hays, Kansas. We learn some essential lessons as they do - and see the world as they begin to see it.

Dan Kois is an editor at Slate, founding host of the podcast Mom and Dad Are Fighting, and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Arlington with his wife and two daughters.
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Book

Published 2019-09-17 by Little Brown

Book

Published 2019-09-17 by Little Brown

Comments

Kois does what many of us have only dreamed of ... Discuss this book with people you care about, who also care about you. Read more...

How to Be a Family is a witty, surprising and compulsively readable book... Nothing is quite as his family imagined it would be and this leads the book into exhilarating, emotionally complex territory.

Vogue recommends the book, saying "Kois is a self-aware, menschy, and amusing guide to this adventure, picking apart what you can leave behind, what you can pick up along the way, and what will follow you wherever you are," and listing it in their "17 Books We Can't Wait to Read This Fall." Read more...

The New Yorker excerpt on bicycling in the Netherlands is quite fun, which was published this past weekend. Read more...

As many parents know, the key to making a family work is: Put in the time. Dan Kois and his wife took their two kids on the trip of a lifetime and learned what's great (and miserable) about how that time passes. The result is a funny, thoughtful, well-reported and inspiring guide for anyone hoping to create family adventures (and misadventures) of their own.

Many parents will relate to the experiences in this book of trying to get your kids to do stuff. Dan gives us some hope that we can ask our kids to do hard things, to adapt to new challenges, and it can be good for everyone. Also, the book is wildly entertaining.

In this highly entertaining and wryly insightful book, Dan Kois shows how elastic the very concept of family is. As he recounts his family's encounters with four foreign cultures, he illuminates not only those other societies, but also our own. He argues persuasively that we have much to learn from divorcing ourselves from our own assumptions.

This sometimes hair-raising adventure in family togetherness across many continents took courage even to attempt, and alively sense of humor to describe. Kois has produced a delightful and eye-opening book about what it means to be a family in the modern world.

How to Be a Family is a hilarious and honest book about family and how wherever you (and your kids) go, there you (and their screens) are.

Lots of people talk about pulling up stakes and traveling for a year. Dan Kois and his family actually did it. He's funny and honest about how it all turned out.

The Today Show aired a cute interview with the Kois family, sharing life lessons they learned from traveling the world. Read more...