UNH Today

Sharenthood

Leah Plunkett, MIT Press, September 2019

The wry Facebook post about your daughter’s suspension for a school prank gone wrong. The celebratory Instagram photo of your nephew leaving the facility where he successfully completed drug treatment. In the digital age, many of us don’t just parent, we also sharent: distribute images, stories and other private information about minors in our care via digital channels — and we fail to grasp the implications of doing so. Written by the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law’s associate dean for administration and director of academic success, “Sharenthood” examines how parents, teachers and other adult caregivers in the United States make decisions to disclose digital data about children that invade traditional zones of privacy and threaten kids’ and teens’ current and future opportunities — as well as their ability to develop their sense of self. In prose that is clear and accessible, Plunkett offers a legal analysis of the sharenting problem, both identifying the ways our laws enable it and offering some ideas on how to fix it.

The Insider’s Guide to Working with Universities

James W. Dean Jr. and Deborah Y. Clarke, UNC Press, September 2019

How do universities differ from businesses? What makes them tick? Billed as a practical guide for board members, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, alumni, parents and administrators who want to invest in and enhance higher education, this new book by UNH’s ultimate insider — its 20th president — is a first-of-its-kind effort to answer those questions and more. Dean and his coauthor Clarke shed light on a range of issues that separate institutions of higher learning from other organizations. In so doing, they provide an invaluable resource for individuals and groups experiencing the reality of a university structure for the first time since their own student days.

The Adventures of Eva and Buckskin Charlie
Book 1
Eva’s Secret Name
Book 2
Eva’s New Older Brother

John Norton ’68G, Best Publishing Company, February and August 2019

In 1870, 12-year-old Eva and her family leave their farm in Virginia to homestead in the Colorado Territory. Initially reluctant to leave behind the life she knows, Eva soon embraces the adventure of a new environment — and a new friend, 14-year- old Buckskin Charlie. Originally written for his then 8-year-old granddaughter, Norton’s stories about two families and two cultures learning to coexist in harmony and balance are the first in a six-book series.

THE MYSTICAL ADVENTURES OF STAVROS PAPADAKIS

Michael Lacoy ’88, Monteverdi Press, June 2019

A heart attack, a coma, trips to heaven and hell. An eventful Christmas Day leads Stavros Papadakis to the realization that, while he may be one of Boston’s most successful lawyers, he’s been a terrible family man, and he vows to make amends. There are only two problems with his plan: his son and his ex-wife want nothing to do with him, and his business partner, the country’s most celebrated trial lawyer, wants him to keep his trip to the afterlife to himself, fearing it will be bad for business. But how can Stavros keep his mouth shut when dying has shown him all that he’s missed out on in his life?

Big Little City

Michael Bove ’00, Moon Pie Press, October 2018

The titular “big little city” of this poetry collection is Portland, Maine — the hometown of Bove, who teaches English at Southern Maine Community College. But Bove’s poems are less about the city itself than about the life and emotions that take place within it: childhood, parenthood and memory, and the experiences attached to these that are at once personal and universal.

The Actual World

Jason Tandon ’07G, Black Lawrence Press, August 2019

Rocks and tonics and bathroom tiles; frogspawn, eyelashes and pots of sage — the short lyric poems of Tandon’s fourth collection create a celebratory song of the everyday. In poem after poem, this collection illustrates just how mysteriously connected unlike things can become as they are transformed from the literal to the figurative.

THE UNSTOPPABLE GARRETT MORGAN

Joan DiCicco ’83, Lee & Low Books, October 2019

With simple illustrations and straightforward prose, DiCicco shares the true story of an African-American inventor who used his formidable intellect and determination to go around, over and through the obstacles that life and society threw his way. “The Unstoppable Garrett Morgan” traces Morgan’s path from Kentucky, where his parents were sharecroppers, to Ohio, where he ultimately developed a pair of safety inventions, the modern versions of which remain in use today.