Training Indian village children to look after buffaloes, instructing girls to use a sewing machine, running adult literacy classes for rural women – Did Betty Robinson in her Youth Employment Office in Dunfermline in the 1950s and 1960s realise where her application for missionary training with the London Missionary Society would take her? Three years of missionary training did not prepare her for that. A buffalo and a sewing machine can literally save a village and give its children a future. Then romance and marriage to a fellow Scot, Leslie Robinson, General Surgeon and Medical Superintendent at the Church of South India’s hospital in Chickballapur, Karnataka.

Children's literature has recently produced a body of criticism with a highly distinctive voice. The book consolidates understanding of this area by including some of the most important essays published in the field in the last five years, demonstrating the links between literary criticism, education, psychology, history and scientific theory. It includes Peter Hollindale's award- winning essay on Ideology and Children's Literature, topics from metafiction and post-modernism to fractal geometry, and the examination of texts ranging from picture books to The Wizard of Oz and the the Australian classic Midnite . Sources are as disparate as Signal and the Children's Literature Association Quarterly , and the international community is represented by writers from Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and Germany. Each essay is set in its critical context by extensive quotation from authoritative articles.

Maralyn Rittenour has lived a life of accidental twists and turns full of luck, opportunity, intrigue, and at times, hardship and tragedy. From her first close call as an infant when her mother literally missed a boat that later sank, to being twice married in November and twice widowed in August, to trips to all seven continents on the globe, to her work for MI6, Thursday’s Child chronicles the life of a true adventurer, her rich family history, and the people—some famous, some not—she’s met along the way. For anyone who has ever traveled extensively, or even just dreamed about it, the wonderful and unexpected journeys told in this travel memoir will captivate and inspire the adventurer in all of us.

Reading Children’s Literature offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children’s literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, it is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children’s literature. A beautifully designed and illustrated supplement to individual literary works assigned, it also provides apparatus that makes it a complete resource for working with children’s literature during and after the course. The second edition includes a new chapter on children’s literature and popular culture (including film, television, and merchandising) and has been updated throughout to reflect recent scholarship and new offerings in children’s media.

Books in the Life of a Child explores the value of books and reading in the stimulation of children's imagination and their fundamental importance in the development of language and true literacy. It examines not only the vast range of children's books available but also how to introduce young people to the joys of reading in the home, the school and in the community. The book has been written as a resource for all adults, especially teachers, student teachers, librarians and parents, and those who care about the value of literature for children. It is a comprehensive and critical guide, with chapters on the history of children's literature and an analysis of its many forms and genres, from poetry, fairytale, myth, legend and fantasy, through realistic and historical fiction, to humour, pulp fiction and information books.