There are few books that capture the actual texture of watching a child grow up, rather than merely reminiscing about childhood. Carl Ewald's slim, piercing volume does exactly that. Written from a father's perspective, it offers a series of sharp, unsentimental vignettes about a little boy learning to walk, to judge people, to navigate the small forbidden pleasures of the world. The prose is careful, funny, and occasionally chilling in its honesty: this is a child who has never traded a kiss for barley-sugar, who can look at you with quite cold eyes, who forms close friendships with strangers while remaining unmoved by persistent admirers. The book traces the boy's early years in vivid detail, from his knock-kneed first steps across paving-stones to his first encounters with nature and the structured world of school. Yet what lingers is not nostalgia but something more complicated: the father's tender apprehension as he watches his son become a person, knowing that each day erodes the wild, unmediated joy of toddlerhood. It endures because every parent recognizes these moments, these small losses, this fierce and complicated love.
