The Nanny Diaries

The Nanny Diaries follows Nanny, a college student earning money as a caregiver to four-year-old Grayer X, the son of a status-obsessed Park Avenue family. As she becomes genuinely attached to Grayer, Nanny is drawn deeper into the absurdities and cruelties of his parents' world: an image-conscious, neglectful mother and an absent, philandering father, both more concerned with appearances than with their own child.

Written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, both former nannies who drew on their own experience working for more than thirty Manhattan families, the novel is a satirical, often comic look at wealth, class and childrearing among New York's elite. It became a best-seller on publication in 2002 and was adapted into a 2007 film starring Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti.