Why is play important in the lives of children? What crucial aspects of learning are being neglected in the current hear-elimination of recess time in public schools? Playing for Keeps, co-authored by the well-known writer and educational leader Deborah Meier, and two colleagues with equally long experience in schools, explores these questions. Based on close observations on a public school playground, the book shows children at play in a relatively natural, unstructured environment. The reader is virtually there, seeing, listening in, able to appreciate the children's curiosity, humour,...

Imagine a child experiencing something so traumatic that her brain forces her to forget the events for 40 years. Thats what happened to Beth Taylor, and thats her personal story of clergy sexual abuse chronicled in Bless Them Father, for They Have Sinned.

Taylors story is an honest, heartbreaking, and hopeful look at her journey to explore repressed memories, and then work to overcome the repercussions of the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of the Catholic clergy.

Every family has its own lore, its own set of funny little anecdotes that are told, and laughed over, at every family reunion. In this case the author has dipped into her own family's file of weird and silly experiences and set them to verse. Written in a narrative and humorous style, each poem has been inspired by events that are unique to the author's family but at the same time can be universally related to. Readers are certain to see echoes of their own family life. From an aunt accidentally waterproofing her Thanksgiving turkey, to the uncle who resuscitated a chicken, the poems are sure...

Kids are being BULLIED at all ages and for all types of reasons. Who will become a defender of children when parents are at work?