Social Science Kids

In Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It, veteran educator and brain expert Eric Jensen takes an unflinching look at how poverty hurts children, families, and communities across the United States and demonstrates how schools can improve the academic achievement and life readiness of economically disadvantaged students.

In Why Have Kids?, Valenti explores these controversial questions through on-the-ground reporting, startling new research, and her own unique experiences as a mom. She moves beyond the black and white “mommy wars” over natural parenting, discipline, and work-life balance to explore a more nuanced reality: one filled with ambivalence, joy, guilt, and exhaustion. Would-be parents must navigate the decision to have children amidst a daunting combination of cultural expectations and hard facts.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the US government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation.

Bobby Phillips is an average 15-year-old boy. Until the morning he wakes up and can't see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming, Bobby is just plain invisible. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to Bobby's new condition; even his dad the physicist can't figure it out. For Bobby that means no school, no friends, no life. He's a missing person. Then he meets Alicia. She's blind, and Bobby can't resist talking to her, trusting her.

Hi, whoever is reading this. I’m Zipporah Chava McConnell, but everyone calls me Zippy. Things used to be simple—until a few weeks ago. Now my best friend, Bea, is acting funny; everyone at school thinks I’m weird; and my mom is making me start preparing for my bat mitzvah, even though we barely ever go to synagogue. In fact, only thing that still seems to make sense is magic. See, the thing is, I’m a witch. I’ve been casting spells since I was little. And even if no one else wants to believe in magic anymore, it’s always made sense to me, always felt true.

What if your dragon is diagnosed with ADHD? What if he is worried, scared and wonders what is wrong with him? What should you do? You help him understand ADHD! You teach him ADHD is not a “defect” and with the right attitude and help, it can be his asset!

How can we raise happy, well-adjusted kids today amid so much injustice and uncertainty? This is the question at the heart of the progressive parent’s dilemma. Fortunately, award-winning science journalist Kavin Senapathy has the answers. In this lively, accessible exploration of modern parenting, Senapathy guides listeners through the complex cultural, environmental, economic and political issues facing all families today.

The first accessible guide to examine Sensory Processing Disorder, The Out-of-Sync Child touched the hearts and lives of thousands of families. Carol Stock Kranowitz continues her significant work with this companion volume, which presents more than one hundred playful activities specially designed for kids with SPD.

Having saved Imagination twice now, Indira is on a well-earned vacation when she is kidnapped by the Anti-Heroes. The covert group has one goal: overthrow the tyrannical leader of Fester and Antagonist Academy. After they plead their case, Indira agrees to join their secret mission and go undercover as a student at the legendary school for villains-in-training—where she gets drawn into a virtual warfare competition known as the Badlands. Facing monster teachers, plotting classmates, distracting love interests, and combative old foes is all second nature to a hero like Indira.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children’s lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive, profit-driven world of the “kid-tech” industry. In Who’s Raising the Kids? Linn—one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children—explores the roots and consequences of this monumental shift toward a digitized, commercialized childhood, focusing on kids’ values, relationships, and learning.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

Lucas and Clara search for Queen Tasha's missing emerald. On their exciting adventure, they travel to all the main attractions of Wrenly: Primlox (the island of fairies), Burth (the island of trolls), Crestwood (the island of dragons), Hobsgrove (the island of wizards), and the beautiful Mermaid's Cove. King Caleb has promised to reward the person who finds the precious stone, and Lucas and Clara are determined to search the entire kingdom until they find it!

All children and teens stress out at times, but if they also have ADHD, their anxiety can skyrocket. Anxiety Relief Tools for Kids and Teens with ADHD: A Practical Guide for Parents has smart strategies that equip parents to equip their children to deal with anxiety. In this book, parents gain insight into how ADHD affects their children and why it causes so much anxiety. This guide is filled with exercises and activities that teach children and teens how to recognize their own ADHD symptoms, counteract them, and start reducing the anxiety caused by ADHD.

Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk-even before they are born - as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monitors with built-in artificial intelligence, and real-time updates from daycare. Unwittingly, parents, teachers, and other trusted adults are compiling digital dossiers for children that could be available to everyone - friends, employers, law enforcement - forever.

Parenting has never been the easiest job in the world, but with all the parenting advice out there, it's hard not to become bewildered. Today everybody has a different method for dealing with the madness. And who's to say one method is better than another? How do you choose? The truth is that whatever drumbeat you march to, all parents would agree that we just want our kids to be happy. But in the face of all the many parenting theories out there, happiness feels like it has become incidental.

David Aguilar was born missing part of one arm, a small detail that seemed to define his life and limit people’s ideas of who he was and who he could be. But in this funny and heartfelt memoir, David proves that he can throw out the rulebook and people’s expectations and maybe even make a difference in the world—and all with a sense of humor.

The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the '80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.

Ghoulia lives in Crumbling Manor with her Auntie Departed and spends most of her time playing with Tragedy, her beloved albino greyhound. But things aren't as easy as they seem for this little zombie girl - all she wants is a real friend. She tries to venture past the manor's walls, but she can't hide her pale green skin or the deep purple circles under her eyes. The other children will be afraid of her, and no one will want to be her friend. But when Halloween rolls around, Ghoulia hatches a brilliant plan.

It's a life-changing trip. Take it! John Ahern had a high-flying job, big house, loving wife and two great kids. But if this was success, why did he sense he was failing as a husband and father? So John did something insane. He quit the corporate world and bought a busted-up camper-van online to chase an improbable dream: a year travelling together as a family...on the road with kids.

In the early 2000s, Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania were known as no-nonsense judges. Juveniles who showed up in their courtrooms faced harsh words and even harsher sentencing. In the post-Columbine era, many people believed that was just what the county needed to ensure its children and teens stayed on the straight and narrow path. But as more and more children faced shocking sentences for seemingly benign crimes, and a newly built for-profit detention center filled up further and further, a sinister pattern of abuses and bribery emerged.