Blog Posts by Valerie Isakova, Shine Parenting Editor

The beloved children's classic features some ugly stereotypes.A parent writing for The New York Times this weekend discussed his conundrum when reading an old Asterix the Gaul book to his child. The child asked, "Dad, why do the pirates have a gorilla?" referring to a grotesque caricature of a black African. A parent could do many things in this situation. The Times writer chose to say "I don't know why the pirates have a gorilla!", followed by a hasty page flip, which is something we all do as parents--or at least, something that I do--when confronted with a question that's difficult to give an age-appropriate answer to.

The Times piece offers an overview of children's classics with racist and colonialist content--famously Huckleberry Finn, Pippi Longstocking, Tintin, Babar--and discussed our various options as a culture: redacting the books to remove the racist material, not reading the books, reading the books and explaining to kids what's wrong with the stereotypes.

What do Shine readers think?

Sandusky's wife arrives at court. Dottie "Sarge" Sandusky, wife of accused Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, took the stand yesterday in her husband's sexual abuse trial, which ended today. Her demeanor was "nervous" and "often wide-eyed," according to The New York Times, but she came to Sandusky's defense by calling one accuser "a charmer," "conniving" and "demanding," and providing alternative accounts of several of the alleged incidents. Speculation has been rife as to her knowledge of events, and as to her responsibility for what took place.

Related: Sandusky defense rests; ex-coach won't testify

Maureen Dowd writing in The New York Times described Sandusky's statements as sounding like she was describing "a romantic rival." Dowd cited an instance where Mrs. Sandusky claimed that one boy was "clingy" and ran across a room to jump into a La-Z-Boy with Jerry, when asked if she'd ever witnessed anything inappropriate between her husband and one of the boys in his charge. Other than that, Mrs.

Bristol Palin with adorable 3-year-old son TrippFormer vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 21-year-old daughter Bristol's reality show, "Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp" debuts tonight on Lifetime (10p.m. Eastern and Pacific, 9p.m. Central), as a chronicle of the 21-year-old's life as the single mother of three-year-old Tripp.

In the first episode, Bristol moves from Wasilla, Alaska to Los Angeles, allegedly to "show Tripp what's out there." (Because three-year-olds are so interested in the wider world.) She moves into a pre-fab Beverly Hills mansion and is joined by her 17-year-old sister Willow, who has come to help with the babysitting. The episode ends with an incident that was widely publicized during the show's filming, in which Bristol goes out to a bar, rides a mechanical bull and gets in a fight with a heckler. The man calls her mother "a whore." The following exchange in which Bristol concludes that he must be "a homosexual" did not air. (See the video here.)

Related: Bristol Palin sued for defamation by bar heckler

Junk food ads on TV encourage kids to eat unhealthy foods. Should they be allowed? Any mom who has cringed when junk food ads targeted to kids interrupt her child's programming will empathize with Reasa Currier, a mom of two from Alexandria, VA, who started an online petition at Change.org two weeks ago, asking Nickelodeon to disallow junk food advertisers.

Currier, 32, was inspired by Disney's announcement on June 5 that it will stop accepting some junk food advertisements on children's TV programs, websites and radio shows. "I saw the Disney announcement and I thought it was amazing. What a positive step in the right direction!" she told Yahoo! Shine.

Disney's initiative requires products advertised on its shows to meet the company's nutrition guidelines established in 2006, which are aligned with federal standards and promote the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables while limiting sugars, salts and fats. That means Disney will phase out sugar cereals, candy and soda advertising by 2015.

Currier's petition presents the facts on childhood obesity: "According

Does it take a pro to take a gorgeous birth photo?
A new breed of photographers who specialize in documenting childbirth is becoming popular, according to an article in this weekend's New York Times. There's even an International Association of Professional Birth Photographers (IAPBP) founded in 2010, with over 400 members in places like Texas, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and New York.

Related: Burning Question: What does a contraction feel like?

These women (birth photographers tend to be women) show up at the hospital when the expectant mother is 7 centimeters dilated and snap away, capturing the dad, the family, the doctors and nurses and the laboring mom and finally, the newborn baby. Most stop short if the mom has an unplanned c-section, but not always.

Related: Childbirth now takes longer than it did 50 years ago

My first reaction to the story was that hiring a birth photographer is shallow and high-maintenance, not to mention out of reach financially for most people (one starting price quoted in the article was $700). In my

Mariah's Challenge founder Leo McCarthy, via CNN.com
Five years ago, Leo McCarthy's 14-year-old daughter Mariah was struck and killed by an underage drunk driver as she walked with two friends on a sidewalk just a block from home in Butte, MT.

McCarthy will never get his daughter back, but he has devoted his life to preventing underage drunk driving--in an unusual way.

Mariah's Challenge, issued to other local Butte teens at Mariah's memorial service, is a covenant between teens and their parents that the teens won't drink alcohol until they are of age, won't drive drunk as adults, and won't get in the car with other people who are under the influence. And if they pledge to do that, upon their graduation from high school, McCarthy will pay them scholarship money for college, through a foundation he set up with the fathers of the other two girls injured in the accident.

Related: NFL arrest heralds DUI crackdown

"If we save one child, we save a generation," McCarthy told Yahoo! Shine.

"If you stick with me for four years," he said

Don't let your child ride alone!
Everyone knows that corn dogs + funnel cakes + a ride that spins you around like crazy till the bottom falls out probably equals upchuck. And we've all heard the horror stories about people getting struck by roller coasters, stuck upside down for hours on a broken ride, or falling during a photo shoot with a Bengal tiger and getting mauled (Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, 1998). But there are lots of other dangers at the amusement park that are less well known and won't show up in accident reports, from the life-threatening to the merely smelly and inconvenient. Here are some things to watch out for.

Related: Theme parks opening new attractions for 2012

(For the record, the most recent safety report from IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) shows only 4.4 reported injuries per million riders. And Gary Slade, editor of industry trade publication Amusement Today told Yahoo! Shine "People should not be concerned about safety, other than doing something

NBA player and fatherhood book author Etan Thomas with two of his children.

Fatherhood--it's more important than ever. More is expected of men, and research shows that guys in are delivering. Fathers have doubled the amount of time they spend with their children since 1995. The stay-at-home-dad is becoming more common. And fathers have even lately been on the receiving end of some good old-fashioned parenting guilt of the type usually aimed at moms. A study published this week (just in time for Father's Day!) in the Personality and Social Psychology Journal indicated that children are more harmed by disengaged and rejecting dads than they are by disengaged and rejecting moms.

Related: Happy Father's Day! Slideshow of his first pics as a dad

In the spirit of celebrating dads for what they're doing right, Yahoo! Shine asked parenting experts, daddy bloggers and even some layman-dads for their thoughts on the formative experiences of fatherhood. The following are the moments to treasure, the things not to miss, and all the other little