Milestones; In Books, a Bridge to Becoming a Better Parent; Through reading, a young mother has learned how to control her temper and connect with her toddler sons.: [Home Edition]

By various means, Anthony Flores, 2, carries the book "Goodnight Moon," throughout the house--in one hand or the other, beneath an arm, under his chin. It's his second copy. The first was lost but in all probability will surface beneath a cushion, behind a chair, inside the toilet tank or in some other venue that beckons to little boys.

"Moon, moon," he says, holding the book on his head.

"OK, OK," says his mother, Jackie Delgado, seated at the dining table.

She turns off the TV, which is always set to public television, the only channel she allows her two sons to watch. There is too much violence on other channels, she says, and she is trying hard to create a safe, peaceful environment for her children.

That's why it hurts so much to know that she has been a source of violence in their lives. It scares her, the way anger seems to seize her, boil in her veins like steam in a kettle.

In bursts of anger, she has pulled her hair, pounded walls. She has spanked Anthony and her older son, Jaime Flores Jr., 3. Her boyfriend, Jaime Flores Sr., the boys' father, has told her she must learn to control her anger, and she knows he is right. But how can she?

Sometimes answers--like children's books--show up in unlikely places. About a month ago, Delgado started reading to her sons, and it changed her life. In childhood books about cows and chickens, monkeys and moons, answers emerged that are helping her achieve the most important goal in her life: to be a good mother.

"Before," she says, "I would yell at them when they wouldn't go to sleep. They would go to sleep crying,...