Lost in the Stacks: Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant

It was a bologna sandwich, Kmart-layaway world. Five dollars to spend at Walmart for treat? Hooray! Make your own pizza at Papa Gino’s? Best birthday ever! That was Stephanie Kiser’s childhood in North Providence, Rhode Island. The daughter of two volatile working-class people living from paycheck to paycheck, Stephanie knew nothing of the privileged world of the wealthy, until she started working as a nanny in New York City. 

The very rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different from you, me and Stephanie. Suddenly she was dressing her preschool charge in a $400 frock and taking her to an exclusive private preschool. Lavish birthday parties, vacations at the Hamptons, celebrity sightings, baby nurses, private chefs – the glittering world of the 1% was both dazzling and daunting. Although she grew to love the children she nannied for, the inequality and thoughtless privilege of the rich rankled. 

Stephanie Kiser’s Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant is both an eye–popping peek at the outrageous demands of the uber-rich – You want me to tuck in your 17-year-old son? – and a candid memoir about being a broke 20-something, saddled with debt and trying your best to figure things out.