In 1961, Ezra Jack Keats wrote and illustrated his first children’s book. It was called "The Snowy Day" and it told the story of Peter, a young, African-American boy in Brooklyn, enjoying the season's first snowfall. The book was immediately popular. Prior to its publication, no other mainstream children’s book had featured a black hero in a non-caricatured way.

Sam Childers was once a drug dealer whose work often turned violent, but in the summer of 1992, he attended a church revival and decided to abandon his life of crime. After traveling to war-torn Sudan to find a way to aid children there, he founded an orphanage with his wife in what is now South Sudan. Childers came on The Takeaway in September to discuss his life, his orphanage, and making amends.

Afghani children can now watch their own version of "Sesame Street."  The new children’s series hit the screens across that country this month. The producers of the original American version of "Sesame Street" have partnered with two popular Afghan television stations to produce "Sesame Garden," or "Baghch-e-Simsim" in the local languages of Dari and Pashto. Like its American counterpart, "Sesame Garden," has a progressive message along the way. The show aims to challenge gender barriers and expand roles for women and girls. Show segments feature young girls going to school, and emphasize female role models in a variety of careers, including as doctors and engineers.

Today the world's population reached seven billion. Duncan Kennedy, reporting for the BBC, spent the first few hours with that seven billionth baby — or one of the newborns that could lay claim to the title — Alice, in Australia. He spoke with her new parents about the advent of a new life in their world, and about what it's like to be the parents of a child on a 7 billion person planet. 

Dr. Seuss fans, rejoice. This fall, seven rare Seuss stories, which were previously printed in Redbook, will be published in book form. The stories — which he wrote between 1950 and 1951 — have fantastically Seussian titles: "The Bippolo Seed," "Zinniga-Zanniga," "Tadd and Todd," and "Gustav the Goldfish." The compilation is called "The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss," and Random House is publishing it in late September.

When times are tough, Americans often turn to comic books. The so-called Golden Age of Comics in the U.S. began with the Great Depression, when out-of-work Americans were desperate for superheroes and role models. Our appetite for Superman and the Green Lantern only grew as Hitler marched across Europe. And Americans aren’t the only ones who need superheroes in difficult times. Our guest for this segment is the author of "The 99," a comic book series published in Kuwait and translated into nine languages. "The 99" follows Islam-inspired superheroes as they fight evil dictators and extremists.

A lot of parents grapple with how to talk to their kids about a certain sensitive topic. They want to know: Are the kids old enough to understand? Am I too late? And will I explain things right? We refer, of course, to money. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner has been working with the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability on this very topic. She joins us from Washington DC, where she’s been on duty. Chuck Kalish is also here. A professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he researches and develops financial literacy curriculum for preschoolers.

President Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham died young, at the age of 52. Because of this, her four grandchildren never got to hear her stories, eat her cooking, or experience those other parts of the special relationship many children are able to have with their grandparents. Maya Soetero-Ng, Dunham's daughter, didn't think deeply about this until one of her kids asked her what grandma was like. That question served as the inspiration for a children’s book called “Ladder to the Moon.” The story, illustrated whimsically by Yuyi Morales, imagines a meeting between Maya’s older daughter and her own mother.

When the results of the latest international test measuring American kids against the rest of the world in math, reading, and science came out back in December, it felt like the country snapped to attention. Kids from China came in #1 in every area, while American students lagged far behind.

Author Amy Chua is creating a firestorm with the essay she wrote in The Wall Street Journal entitled, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." In it, she says the key to successfully raising a child is to forbid them from a whole load of activities like attending sleepovers or playdates and to settle for nothing less than A grades.

The backlash to her essay (and book) has been huge, but we're opening it up to you: Do you think there are any benefits to raising children this strictly?

What would you do if a child sincerely asked you for something impossible? That's the situation Santa (and helpers) faces every year, as well as many parents. It's sometimes hard for parents to meet the most extreme requests for gifts... but it's always hard to disappoint one's kids. We get a personal story from Kim Hamilton, Takeaway listener from Lubbock, Texas, and mother of a four-year-old boy with high Christmas gift hopes.

It’s Thanksgiving week and the start of the holiday season. While the holidays can be a great time for getting together with the family, it can also be a time that’s fraught with tension for those people who no longer fit in at home (if, indeed, they ever did). Are you a "black sheep" ? Or do you have one in your family? 

For nearly fifty years Nora Ephron has been writing about marriage, divorce, family, love and death — in essays and movies that have become popular for their insight and wit about relationships, including “When Harry Met Sally,” “Heartburn,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” and “Julie and Julia.”

“Zora and Me” fictionalizes the childhood of the Harlem Renaissance writer, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. (Hurston was born in 1891, lived through the Jim Crow south, and died in 1960.) The young adult novel is the first in a planned trilogy which imagines Hurston as a girl detective in her all-black hometown of Eatonville, Florida, at the start of the 20^th century.

A New York judge ruled that a four year old girl can be sued for negligence. In April 2009, four year old Juliet Breitman was riding her bike with a friend on a Manhattan sidewalk when she ran down an 87 year old woman named Claire Menagh, who fell and broke her hip. Menagh died several months later of unrelated causes. Justice Paul Wooten of State Supreme Court in Manhattan did not find Juliet liable, but ruled to allow the lawsuit to move forward. Alan Feuer has been following the story for The New York Times.

[CORRECTION: an earlier edition of this story said that Menagh "later died of the injuries she sustained." According to the Times, Menagh's death came months later and of causes unrelated to injuries from the accident. -Eds.]

Yesterday, we talked with the author of "My Princess Boy," a mother who's 5 year old son has a predilection for pretty things and girls' clothing. It made us wonder about the times when you have looked at your child and asked, "What on Earth are they wearing?" You told us your stories, and what you did about your child's questionable sartorial choices.

“My Princess Boy – A mom’s story about a young boy who loves to dress up” is a new children’s book which is being used by some schools to prevent bullying and to encourage the acceptance of others who don’t fit into the traditional mainstream.

On Monday's show, we'll be talking with Cheryl Kilodavis, author of the new children's book, "My Princess Boy." Cheryl wrote the book after she noticed her young son's preference for dressing up in girls' clothing. When has your child behaved in a way that made you reevaluate your beliefs or the way you parent? How did you react?

Post your comments below or leave us a message at 877-8-MY-TAKE.

Check out a video of Cheryl and her "princess boy," Dyson, after the jump.

Last week, things looked a lot different for aspiring gay and lesbian parents in Florida, where a ban on adoption by gay couples has been in place since the 1970s. But after 13 months, the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami struck down the ban, saying it was unconstitutional. One of the people rejoicing today is former television anchor Charles Perez, who joined us last week to talk about the ban.

We’ve all heard of single women in their thirties freezing their eggs for later use. But Gillian St. Lawrence has taken the idea somewhat further.

Gillian is thirty. She’s been happily married for nearly ten years. She and her husband, Paul St. Lawrence, both want children... just not yet. They don’t, however, want to face the potentially lower fertility rates and higher genetic disorder rates that might come if they decide to get pregnant years down the road. They’ve opted to create and freeze five embryos, which they’ll implant in ten or fifteen years, when they feel more ready.