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The Measure of Our Success
By Marian Wright Edelman

The background: Edelman is an incredibly accomplished person: She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar; she worked with Martin Luther King Jr.; and now she leads the Children’s Defense Fund. This is a love letter to her three sons in the form of 25 lessons.

Why she chose it: In the introduction, Edelman discusses her worries that her children were brought up in a too-privileged era. “Giving up and ‘burnout’ were not part of the language of my elders…you did what you had to do and you got up every time you fell down and tried as many times as you had to to get it done right,” she writes. That really hit me—I have such a huge fear of failing. I read the book ten years ago, as a young adult, and I found the lessons inspiring. Now, as a parent, I see them in a whole new way. Continue reading Books That Made a Difference to Keri Russell

In “Extraordinary Measures,” Keri Russell stars with Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford as a remarkable mom. Based on a true story, the film chronicles the lives of John and Aileen Crowley, a New Jersey couple who fought to find a treatment for an enzyme deficiency that threatened to kill two of their children. Doubling as executive producer, Ford plays a scientist helping to develop a life-saving drug.

The 33-year-old actress, who launched her career on the popular 1990s TV series “Felicity,” explores new dramatic terrain portraying a mother of three. To prepare for the role, Russell, who became a mother two years ago, visited the Crowleys at their Princeton home and spent a day with Aileen. The couple’s daughter, Megan, and son, Patrick, were born with Pompe disease, a rare condition characterized by the accumulation of a complex sugar known as glycogen in the body’s cells. Continue reading ‘Extraordinary Measures’: Keri Russell grows into the role of mom

Keri Russell knows celebrity cuts both ways. A decade ago when she was a Hollywood It girl and star of TV’s Felicity, she hacked off her then-iconic tresses and suffered a backlash that would have made Kate Gosling’s extensions stand on end.

By those standards, the 33-year-old Russell reports she is now comparatively anonymous — a development about which she couldn’t be more pleased. At last, no one has an opinion on how long — or short — her curls are. Continue reading Russell stays under the radar