Product Description: The average British fourteen-year-old watches a great deal of TV. He helps to spend a quarter of a million pounds on pop records every Saturday. Like the rest of us he is beset by advertisements. As an adult he is virtually certain to read mass-circulation daily and Sunday newspapers...read more

Philip Pullman's writing is full of mystery and adventure - of parallel universes, daemons and armoured bears. The 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is set to become a major motion picture event with the release of the first film, 'The Golden Compass'. This work explores this epic world and the diverse creative influences of Pullman's brilliant work.

A biographical portrait of the popular fantasy author looks at the life and work of Philip Pullman, examining the influences on his writing, including the author's unconventional childhood, and analyzing such key titles as Clockwork, I Was a Rat!, and the Dark Materials trilogy, all enhanced by never-before-published personal photographs, interview material, and illustrations from his novels. Original.

Product Description: "The Rough Guide to Books for Teenagers" is an illustrated pocket guide to the best books available for young people between the ages of 11 and 17. Containing reviews of nearly 200 individual books, ranging from classics like "Sons and Lovers" to up-to-the-minute titles like "The Beach", the emphasis is on fiction but also includes graphic novels and narrative non-fiction...read more

Product Description: Family Fictions provides an introduction to the history of family stories in children's literature and an in-depth critical study of the works of Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine and Morris Gleitzman. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In Denmark, Finland and Sweden the evolution of administrative law, including social welfare law, has been marked by a shift towards a stronger protection of the recipient's individual rights. The adoption of activation policies targeting recipients of social assistance has highlighted the tensions between decision-making concerning the implementation of these policies and the legislative efforts to promote the realisation of individual rights in the field of social welfare...read more

Imaginative poems and pictures, puzzles, games, jokes, and limericks, accompanied by color illustrations, introduce numbers one through ten, as well as such important related concepts as the seven days of the week, and challenge children to count in sequence.

Discusses the physical and emotional changes that occur in adolescence and some of the problems that arise during this period of development.

Describes the stages of human development from infancy through age eleven.

Product Description: Children's responses to literature are equally fascinating from the psychological and the literary point of view. Nicholas Tucker's exploratory study traces the relationship between the child and the book using both these perspectives, from the baby's fir