Parenting Books
Buy and sell parenting books in Guatemala.
In Guatemala a parenting book often starts at a school’s evening talk for parents, when the speaker names a title and several families go looking for the same one that week. Guides to discipline and to talking with children sit alongside pregnancy, newborn and breastfeeding manuals and books on raising teenagers around phones, new and pre-owned, in Spanish and in English. A parenting book is read for one stage of a child’s life and then waits on a shelf, so a clean copy can serve several families before it wears out.
Discipline books that a school talk sends parents looking for:
these are the titles a school psychologist or a parish talk tends to cite. Jane Nelsen’s Positive Discipline argues for being firm and kind at once, without punishments or rewards, with companion volumes for toddlers and for teenagers. Laura Markham’s Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids starts with the parent’s own temper: stop shouting first, then work on the child. Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen circulates in Spanish under two slightly different titles, so search for both wordings before deciding nobody has it.
Pregnancy, newborn and breastfeeding guides:
these date faster than any other parenting book. Advice on how a baby should sleep and when to start solid food has been revised more than once, so for anything that tells you what to do with a newborn, look at the copyright page and favour the latest edition. La Leche League’s handbook shows the trap well. The copy most people own is The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, which the League has since rewritten and retitled The Art of Breastfeeding, first in English. The League’s Guatemala group holds monthly meetings for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. Recipe books for a baby’s first purées are filed with the cookbooks.
Teenagers, screens and books for a child who needs something different:
the newer shelf deals with phones, social media and the teenager who has stopped talking. Guides to raising children online age as fast as the apps they describe, while a method book keeps its value: Nelsen’s revised English edition adds social media, but an older Spanish copy teaches the same approach. Books for parents of a child with autism or ADHD are a smaller part of the trade, and they hold their value because whoever looks for one knows exactly what they need. Activity books to keep a small child busy sit with the coloring books.
Imported parenting paperbacks and the unread baby-shower copy:
most Spanish-language titles on a Guatemalan bookshop shelf are printed abroad and sell new for around Q200 to Q280. Used, the price follows the edition and how much of the book has been lived in. A duplicate from a baby shower, still in its plastic, is a new book and is worth close to what it cost. A popular discipline title with underlining sells for much less, because the same book is easy to find new. An old edition of a pregnancy guide is worth little however clean it is, since the advice is the part that has aged.
Margin notes, dedications and the copyright page in a used parenting book:
a parenting book is read with a pen in hand, so expect notes in the margin. Check the copyright page before the cover, because two copies with the same title can be different editions. A dedication from a grandmother or a handout from a school talk folded inside does no harm. Pregnancy journals and baby record books are another matter: once filled in, they are keepsakes rather than books to pass on.
Passing on the books from a stage your family has left:
parenting books come up when the youngest starts school, when a family moves, or when a baby shower brings a second copy of the same guide. Put the exact title and author in the listing because that is what a buyer types. Give the edition and the language, say how much is underlined, and photograph the copyright page and one marked spread. Buyers are often parents at the same school or across town, so say whether you can hand it over at school pick-up in Mixco or Villa Nueva. Someone after a newborn guide is usually a few weeks from the birth and wants it soon, so put the edition in the first line.