I’m in love with gardening as a metaphor for creative work and raising kids, but I’m not in love with the second half of Gopnik’s metaphor. Based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of carpentry, it is a handcraft that requires selecting the right wood for the job and working with the grain, not against it, etc. I’m thinking, for example, of Pinocchio, which literally starts out with a talking log, and is about the perils of trying to “shape” materials into something they’re not. (For a great take on the parenting side of the Pinocchio story, see Edward Carey’s The Swallowed Man.) A factory would seem to be more the opposite of a garden, but that quibble aside, I think this book is worth it just for Gopnik’s explanation of why she’s against parenting as a verb.