Social Science Kids

If you ask Delphinia Baker, she’d tell you she has all the family she needs. Sure, her mom passed away when she was young, her dad is often away on deployment, but even though Del has never had anyone she can call her people, she has always had her grandmother—and that’s enough. Besides, having no roots just makes it that much easier when you have to move again. All of that changes, though, when Gramma falls ill and Del is sent to stay with her great-grandmother. Del has never even heard of Nana Rose, and she has no interest in spending the summer on a hot island off the South Carolina coast.

Since its initial publication in hardcover in 2003, Fires in the Bathroom has been through multiple printings and received the attention of teachers across the country. Now, Kathleen Cushman's groundbreaking book offers original insights into teaching teenagers in today's hard-pressed urban high schools from the point of view of the students themselves. It speaks to both new and established teachers, giving them firsthand information about who their students are and what they need to succeed.

The perfect boredom-busting book for long winter evenings with the family, Richard Herring's Would You Rather? is packed with hundreds of the biggest questions to face us all, including: Would you rather have a conversation with a dolphin or an elephant? Would you rather fall in love or fall into a swimming pool full of your favourite biscuits? Would you rather live in a giant shoe or a giant peach? Would you rather own a car with Jimmy Carr, a lorry with Laurie Anderson or a van with Van Morrison?

Over the past decade, educational instruction has become increasingly digitized as districts rush to dole out laptops and iPads to every student. Yet the most important question, “Is this what is best for students?” is glossed over. Veteran teachers Joe Clement and Matt Miles have seen firsthand how damaging technology overuse and misuse has been to our kids. On a mission to educate and empower parents, they show how screen saturation at home and school has created a wide range of cognitive and social deficits in our young people.

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.

Auggie and his magical companions are tending to the Fabled Stables when the building shakes and shudders to make room for a new arrival: the Tattle-Tail. Auggie and friends travel through the portal to a town called Rainbow’s End in search of this mysterious creature. Auggie assumes that the Tattle-Tail is in danger, but he learns that it’s actually the town that needs rescuing...from an infestation of Tattle-Tails!

Leo Fender is no stranger to catastrophe, whether it’s the intergalactic war that took his mother’s life or the ongoing fight for his own. He’s seen his planet plundered, his ship attacked, his father kidnapped, and his brother go missing—and found himself stranded on a ship with a bunch of mercenary space pirates. Still, nothing could have prepared him for the moment he and the crew tried to save his father...and discovered a dark plot that could destroy hundreds of worlds in the blink of an eye.

Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. If you have ever experienced the corruption, lies and deceit of Child Protective Services (CPS) workers in the United States of America today, then you know the real dangers this brave new author faces in publishing this, her very first book. This book offers valuable measures you can take to avoid encounters with the Child Protective Services social workers if you are a parent, even if you are not in the United States, as CPS corruption and fraud are an epidemic worldwide.

You need to work to live. That’s the truth for most people, and plenty of people in power have been abusing that truth for centuries. Long before the first labor unions were formed, workers still knew what exploitation looked like. It looked like the enslavement of Black people. It looked like generations of children dying in dangerous jobs. It looked like wealthy people hiring private militaries to attack their employees. But workers have always found a way to fight back.

In a book that’s both accessible and enlightening, Rebecca Friedrichs recounts her 30-year odyssey as an elementary school teacher who comes face to face with the forces dividing and corrupting our schools and culture - state and national teachers’ unions. An exciting true story that features real-life testimonies of teachers, parents, and kids as well as political and social commentary, Rebecca’s journey leads her to the realization that the only hope for America’s schools and families is returning authority to parents and teachers while lessening the grip of state and national unions.

In Keeping the Kids All Right, Barak Lurie shows conservative parents how to keep their kids conservative without homeschooling, and without quarantining kids from TV, friends, social media, their Uncle Eddie, or any other outside force. As he puts it, “your kids will remain unphased, like a Hurricane Hunter plane going through a category 5 hurricane.”

What if, instead of trying to predict the future, we could just pick the one we want - and then invent it? Well, we can. Think of the wealth of technological resources already available to us. The computing power in that smartphone in your pocket could have guided 120 million Apollo-era spacecraft to the Moon and back. A gigabyte of memory cost $300,000 in the 1980s - today, it costs a fraction of a penny. Now, try to imagine 2050, when your computing devices will be a million times more powerful or available at one-millionth of today's prices.

The truth about the Super children - who have real powers like flight and super strength - is finally exposed, and the town of Noble’s Green has created a special boarding school for its superpowered children. That’s where all Daniel’s friends are headed, while he - regular kid that he is - is headed to summer school. But all is not well at the Academy for the Extraordinarily Gifted. A clique of popular kids (led by a pair of sinister twins) has taken over the school, and once again, it’s powerless Daniel who may be able to stop them.

Every morning on CNBC's Squawk Box, Joe Kernen asks challenging questions. And at home he does the same with his young daughter, Blake. What are you learning in school? What TV shows do you like? What message did you get from that movie? When Blake was nine, her answers told Joe that she had already absorbed a distorted view of economics---from her school, pop culture (even animated movies!), and just about everywhere else.

Twelve-year-old Daniel, the new kid in town, soon learns the truth about his nice - but odd - new friends: one can fly, another can turn invisible, yet another controls electricity. Incredible. The superkids use their powers to secretly do good in the town, but they’re haunted by the fact that the moment they turn thirteen, their abilities will disappear - along with any memory that they ever had them. Is a memory-stealing supervillain sapping their powers?

>n Making Grateful Kids, two of the leading authorities on gratitude among young people, Jeffrey J. Froh and Giacomo Bono, introduce their latest and most compelling research, announce groundbreaking findings, and share real-life stories from adults and youth to show parents, teachers, mentors, and kids themselves how to achieve greater life satisfaction through gratitude.

If someone were to ask you what the leading cause of death is among American children today, what would you say? Cancer? Car accidents? Obesity? The answer is firearms. Guns kill more children in our country than anything else. It’s a shocking statistic, no matter your politics. So how do we solve it? Where can we find common ground on one of the most divisive issues in America? The solution, according to Dr. Gorelick, lies in public health.

The unforgettable inspiring memoir of one extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way, Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor's office on wheels. His patients are the city's homeless adolescents and children.

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.

There is a famous cave located just outside of Spooksville. A lot of stories surround the dark place: scary ones as well as exciting ones. Adam decides to explore the cave with his friends, Watch, Sally, and Cindy. But the moment they go into the cave, the entrance closes behind them. They are trapped. In the dark. They walk deeper into the cave, frantically searching for a way out. The batteries in their flashlights begin to run low. Then they realize something is following them. Something that has been in the cave for a long time. Something big, black…and hungry.