Don't Make Me Stop This Car!: Adventures in Fatherhood - Hardcover

Roker, Al

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568959222 ISBN 13: 9781568959221

Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc, 2000

Synopsis

In Don't Make Me Stop This Car!, Al Roker takes us home. Here we meet his wife, Deborah, and his daughters, Courtney and Leila. Just like men all over the country, Al is a modern father, and in this book, he takes an affectionate look at the joys and perils of fatherhood. Al provides an unprecedented, intimate look into his experiences with infertility treatments, adoption, and the normal fears and wonders of an expecting parent. As Al manages the needs of his daughters from two marriages and the demands of a high-profile career, he is like millions of others who fantasize about the newest sport utility vehicle, struggle with a GapKids addiction, and bask in the golden moments of first steps and special Father's Day meals. Of course, being a father brings back memories of his own childhood, and Al reminisces about riding his father's bus route in Brooklyn, disobeying his parents' command "Do not let Andrew watch Psycho," and the beginnings of his passion for cartooning. Along the way, Al comes to a deeper understanding of his parents' love for him and a whole new appreciation of them as grandparents.

Heartwarming, honest, and funny, Don't Make Me Stop This Car! is a sneak peek into the heart of the guy in the driver's seat, the modern American dad.

About this title

Review:

Al Roker, the genial weatherman on NBC's top-rated Today show, has written a book that reads like a long chat over coffee. Light and involving, Don't Make Me Stop This Car talks frankly about fertility problems, parenting, divorce, adoption, and... 'toons. It turns out that Roker's a cartoon fanatic, and his own capable, funny drawings grace the back cover and chapter headings. In the first half of Don't Make Me Stop This Car, Roker and his wife, 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts, struggle to get pregnant. They conceive a child the old-fashioned way but lose it during the first trimester. Roker candidly discusses the causes of their impaired fertility: his low sperm count and his wife's plummeting progesterone levels. Key doctors are introduced (and, annoyingly, reintroduced) in the ensuing chapters before Leila is delivered via C-section in November 1998. Part two is a collection of essays on topics ranging in seriousness from Ricky Martin to racism. Roker's better with weightier subjects, such as the challenges and pleasures of adoption and foster care. And there are some compelling descriptions of his childhood that make you admire his salt-of-the-earth parents. At times the writing sounds as if Roker dictated and didn't spend much time editing. It's punctuated by exclamations that surely sound better on TV ("Yesss!" "Is this a great country, or what?" "Gotta go!"). But the informality grows less irritating as the book goes on. Ultimately, you're left with a sense of Roker as a middle-class hero--proud of his bus-driver dad but rich enough to buy fertility treatments and then decorate the baby's nursery with trinkets from the "statusphere." All in all, it's a sunny forecast for Mr. Roker's fatherhood book. --Kathi Inman Berens

About the Author:

Al Roker began his broadcasting career while in college, landing a job as a weekend weatherman at WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York. After stops in Washington, D.C., and Cleveland, Ohio, he began working at NBC in 1983. He lives in New York City with his wife, ABC News 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts, and their two daughters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1568959222
• ISBN 13: 9781568959221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 247