Smart Mom's Baby-Sitting Co-op Handbook by Gary Myers

This book is for a mother of preschoolers who wants time out to better care for herself, her family, and her friends. Do the start up in one hour with three friends. Then slowly have others join. When you get ten-moms you will always be able to count on a sitter. With ten moms you are also free to be a sitter when the time works with your schedule. It is all done with points and one call to the secretary--no hunting for a sitter. You serve one month as secretary on rotation with ten other moms. No pleas for help. No guilt. It works on autopilot. It is based on a Baby-sitting Co-op that has been passed from mom to mom for over twenty years. Quick reading. Well organized and humorous. 

Given to me by my local Woman's club Baby-sitting co-op to read before I can join.  Now given that I have been waiting a year to join and no-one seems to be able to organise the proverbial in a brewery, I was interested in reading this to think about starting my own Baby-sitting Co-op.

The advice is quite good when you take out all the unnecessary hyperbole that just does not add to the book.  It felt like a lot was left in to pad out the book, while some other information was lacking for me.  A good first read to give you some ideas and to get some sample forms to run your Co-op smoothly.  As long as you don't expect this to be a complete manual for you, you could use it as a basic guide and insert all the areas that work better for you.  I would also suggest that the advice to buy a copy of this book for each and every new member of the co-op to keep is a tad excessive as once you have read it I would really doubt you would refer to it again.  In my opinion, a couple of copies for the group would suffice - one master for the Secretary (who may need to refer back to it) and one to pass onto new members to read and return. 

I was quite generous and gave this 3 stars, purely because the idea of a babysitting co-op warrants it and kudos to those involved in this book for taking the time to put it all together for people like me to get some ideas.  It is easy for me to say I could have written something better but I am highly unlikely to, so again, kudos to them!