Offers a fascinating and understandable account of childhood development for anyone—education and psychology students, day care center workers and... nursery school teachers, and parents.

A chronicle of the life of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl, who kept a diary during her family's attempts to hide from the Nazis in the 1940s. Important... dates in the life of Anne Frank and notes from the author are included.

A Picture's Worth, the PECS primer written by the developers of the Picture Exchange Communication System, is now available in a second edition. This... user-friendly guide introduces PECS, a simple and empowering communication tool in which partners exchange cards with photos or line drawings representing objects, attributes, and actions. A child or adult who has delayed or no speech can easily express his basic desires (e.g., ''ice cream'') or needs using a PECS card without prompting from another. And as a person's PECS usage progresses, he or she learns to put pictures together in sentences to express desires (e.g., ''I want chocolate ice cream.''), to comment, and to ask questions. A Picture's Worth examines verbal communication development and how autism affects these skills, and shows how a child's poor communication skills can lead to problem behaviors. Providing communication options--PECS and the other augmentative and alternative communication strategies (AAC) described in the book--reduces frustration and enhances learning. This new edition cites research that proves PECS (and other AAC strategies) doesn't interfere with the development of speaking skills, and actually can provide a boost to the acquisition of these skills. There's also expanded information on: -Deciding whether a child needs AAC and could benefit from PECS -Who is an appropriate candidate for PECS -Error correction strategies during the initial stages of PECS -How to choose challenging behaviors to try to eliminate -What to do when a child does not look at pictures Thousands of people with autism and other disabilities have benefited from using PECS. The book's complete set of introductory lessons makes it easy for parents and therapists to get started using this low-tech strategy to help young children through adults develop effective communication skills! Also check out Andy Bondy's and Lori Frost's book on including kids with autism in daily family routines: Autism 24/7.

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling,... gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness.Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty. And that’s when things got interesting….You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years—maybe it’s the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once—when Cupcake’s story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake’s troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead.Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake’s unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster. Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and “angels”—a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments—she slowly transformed her life from the inside out. A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contem-porary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take. When it came time for me to talk, I wasn’t sure which parts of my past to tell, which to keep secret, and which to pretend never happened. Uncle Jr. had already seen the welts on my back, so he wasn’t too surprised when I told them about some of the physical abuse I endured at Diane’s. Everyone else hit the roof, except Daddy. He got really quiet and started balling and unballing his fists. I continued my update. Experience had taught me that adults have trouble accepting the idea of children having sex. I decided that from then on, that part of my life never happened. I picked up the story by telling them about Fly, the Gangstas, and getting shot. I was dying for a cigarette. So it seemed a good time to announce that I smoked cigarettes—and weed.After a moment Sam looked at me, smiled, and handed me one of her Marlboros. I preferred menthols, but beggars can’t be choosers. I kicked back, took a long drag, and closed my eyes. Daddy and Jr. were silent. They seemed a bit shocked and unsure about how to respond. “Well, Cup,” Jr. said, “it’s a little too late to be trying to raise you now. But those cigarettes will kill you. And weed will only lead you to stronger drugs.” He didn’t know how right he was. But for me, it was too late to be worrying about stronger drugs—the only worrying I did was whether I could find a connection to get some. So I just smiled, nodded, and took another hit off my cigarette. The eerie quiet returned. —from A Piece of CakeAlso available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.From the Hardcover edition.

Full Length, Drama Characters: 1 male, 6 femaleUnit set This is a powerful, true drama of six women who went to Viet Nam five nurses and a country... western singer booked by an unscrupulous agent to entertain the troops. The play portrays each young woman before, during, and after her tour in the war torn jungle and ends as each leaves a personal token at The Wall in Washington.A Piece of My Heart premiered in New York at Manhattan Theatre Club, and now has enjoyed over 1000 productions here and abroad. It has recently been named "The most enduring play on Vietnam in the nation," by The Vietnam Vets Association. "There have been a number of plays dealing with Viet Nam, but none with the direct, emotional impact of Ms. Lauro's work."-N.Y. Times "Brought [the audience] to tears... and a standing ovation."-Variety "A riveting, rending dramatic experience."-Louisville Courier Journal

The thirty-seven works of art, twenty-four in full color, presented in A Piece of My Heart take us into the heart of one of the most distinguished... painters of Chicano life. In a career that spans twenty years, Carmen Lomas Garza has depicted the cherished traditions and harsh struggles of Chicano culture. From Grandparents Cutting Cactus to Felino's Breakdancers, Lomas Garza's bright, colorful images capture the beauty and texture of daily life among families, friends, and neighbors in southern Texas.

A Piece of My Mind" (APOMM) is a weekly feature in JAMA; physicians, residents, medical students, nurses, patients, family members of patients, and... others submit stories that reflect their experience and thoughts regarding health, illness, medical care, and death and dying. "APOMM" is the cornerstone of the JAMA Medical Humanities program, and surveys reveal that when readers open their new copies of JAMA each week , most turn first or second to "APOMM". Many stories are heart-warming. some are sad, some are funny, and all are thoughtful and thought-provoking. This new collection is the cream of the crop about 80 stories culled from the past 10 years. A previous collection in 1988, published in conjunction with Feeling Fine, Inc., and Alfred A. Knopf, sold about 14,000 copies.

From the internationally acclaimed Israeli writer Meir Shalev comes a mesmerizing novel of two love stories, separated by half a century but connected... by one enchanting act of devotion.During the 1948 War of Independence--a time when pigeons are still used to deliver battlefield messages--a gifted young pigeon handler is mortally wounded. In the moments before his death, he dispatches one last pigeon. The bird is carrying his extraordinary gift to the girl he has loved since adolescence. Intertwined with this story is the contemporary tale of Yair Mendelsohn, who has his own legacy from the 1948 war. Yair is a tour guide specializing in bird-watching trips who, in middle age, falls in love again with a childhood girlfriend. His growing passion for her, along with a gift from his mother on her deathbed, becomes the key to a life he thought no longer possible.  Unforgettable in both its particulars and its sweep, A Pigeon and A Boy is a tale of lovers then and now--of how deeply we love, of what home is, and why we, like pigeons trained to fly in one direction only, must eventually return to it.  In a voice that is at once playful, wise, and altogether beguiling, Meir Shalev tells a story as universal as war and as intimate as a winged declaration of love.From the Hardcover edition.

This Millenium Edition includes the only two published works of Joseph Pilates. Newly copyrighted, edited and revised, this book makes available in one... volume all of his early Twentieth Century philosophies, principles, and theories about health and fitness, as well as the exercises, poses, and instructions fundamental to his exciting fitness program. You will also learn every single one of his original 34 mat exercises taught to his own students. Living testimony to the validity of his own teachings, Joseph Pilates shares in these writings his fundamental tenets of posture, body mechanics, correct breathing, spinal flexibility, physical education, and his law of natural exercises.