This book is great for those of us who have been brought up with manners, but it can be very frustrating when we try to enforce some of the more old-fashioned manners and other adults tell us (in front of the children) that "it's okay" or whatever. When I tell my stepdaughter to call adults Mr. and Mrs. So-And-So and then those adults say not to, that bothers me. Or if I tell my stepdaughter not to push to get in front of adults and they say "that's okay", that bothers me too. It seems that manners are not expected of children these days and I guess that is why we don't see them so often. Plus it takes guts for we adults who believe in manners at all ages to stand up to adults who don't expect manners from children!

Well, I think kids are really excited about manners, as my stepdaughter asks all the time to have her dad read from "the manners book". And this book has all the manners that you remember as a kid: table manners, the lost art of the THANK YOU letter, etiquette when you are a guest at someone else's home (what to bring, what to say), etc. I really like it so far!

Another reviewer mentioned that the lessons are laid out for each day of the year. That doesn't really apply to us either, since my stepdaughter isn't here every day, so we just started at the beginning and use a bookmark to pick up at the next lesson. Some lessons are very short, some are longer, and the book is broken into chapters so you can look up specific situations as well if you need to.

We've enjoyed it and we highly recommend it. I actually recommended it to a lady in a restaurant who had a remarkably polite two-year-old. You don't have to wait until bad manners are a habit to introduce good manners. Kids are so eager to do the right thing if they are introduced to it from the beginning! And we adults have learned a few things ourselves!