It’s no secret that toy and media corporations manipulate the insecurities of parents to move their products, but Buy, Buy Baby unveils the chilling fact that these corporations are using—and often funding—the latest research in child development in order to sell things directly to babies and toddlers. Underlying these revelations is a dangerous economic and cultural shift: our kids are becoming consumers at alarmingly young ages and suffering all the ills that rampant materialism used to visit only on adults—from anxiety to hyper-competitiveness to depression. Thomas blends prodigious reportage with an empathetic voice. Her two daughters were toddlers while she wrote this book, and she never loses sight of the temporal and emotional challenges that parents face. She shows how we can help our kids live at their natural pace, not the frenetic clip that serves only the toddler-industrial complex.

The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World. Susan Linn, $22.50

In The Case for Make Believe, Harvard child psychologist Susan Linn tells the alarming story of childhood under siege in a commercialized and technology-saturated world.

In an era when toys come from television and media companies sell videos as brain-builders for babies, Linn lays out the inextricable links between play, creativity, and  health, showing us how and why to preserve the space for make believe that children need to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. Joel Bakan, $32.00

From the writer of the hit film and international bestselling book The Corporation comes a shocking venture behind the scenes of the widespread manipulation of children by profit-seeking corporations — and of society's failure to protect them.

CHILDHOOD UNDER SIEGE reveals big business's discovery of a new resource to be mined for profit — our children. A journey through a world of unabashed exploitation, clued-out parents, and governments that look the other way, it tells the chilling and at times darkly humorous story of business's plans to turn kids into obsessive and narcissistic mini-consumers, media addicts, cheap and pliable workers, and chemical industry guinea pigs. Not to mention pharmaceutical pill poppers — psychotropic drug consumption by children has increased fivefold since 1980.

It's a winner-takes-all battle for children's hearts, minds and bodies as corporations pump billions into rendering parents and governments powerless to protect children from their calculated commercial assault and its disturbing toll on their health and well-being.

Children and the Internet: Great Expectations, Challenging Realities. Sonia Livingstone, $29.95

This major new book by a leading researcher deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children's everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, Children and the Internet reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as:

• Digital in/exclusion
• Learning and literacy
• Peer networking and privacy
• Civic participation
• Risk and harm

Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet. It concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children's rights to expression, connection and play online as well as offline.

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole. Benjamin Barber, $18.50

Consumed offers a vivid portrait of an overproducing global economy that targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs … He asserts that in place of the Protestant ethic once associated with capitalism — encouraging self-restraint, preparing for the future, protecting and self-sacrificing for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood — we are constantly being seduced into an “infantilist” ethic of consumption.

Cyber-Bullying: Issues and Solutions for the School, the Classroom and the Home. Shaheen Shariff, $40.95

Cyber-bullying is expanding with the use of modern technology — home computers and personal mobile phones — and provides youth with ‘an arsenal of weapons for social cruelty’. Addressing the policy vacuum relating to the boundaries of on-line supervision through informed guidelines for school administrators, teachers, parents and policy-makers, this book will help all stakeholders navigate the emerging challenges relating to student freedom of expression, privacy, safety and discipline in cyber-space.

CyberSafe. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keefe, $16.95

Protecting and empowering kids in the digital world of texting, gaming and social media.

Marc Prensky presents the case that the video and computer games your child plays can be beneficial and offer excellent opportunities for learning a multitude of skills. From collaboration and conflict resolution skills to prudent risk taking; strategy formation and execution to complex moral and ethical decisions; from hand-eye coordination to comprehensive computer knowledge — computer and video games can offer children skills for life in the 21st century.

Thoughtful and provocative, Prensky offers some insight and entertaining arguments for re-framing the hype and learning to work with — not against — a cultural phenomenon that is not going away.

Gender and the Media. Rosalind Gill, $26.99

Written in a clear and accessible style, with plenty of examples from British and American media, this book offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates.

Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything. Michael Osit, $25.00

Generation Text examines the ways in which children’s identities are shaped by the world around them…and how, with an absence of meaningful barriers between impulse and the ability to act on them, parents can help children learn to make intelligent choices and manage the potential overload successfully.

Grand Theft Childhood: the Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games. Lawrence Kutner & Cheryl Olson, $28.99

In this groundbreaking and timely book, Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson cut through the myths and hysteria, and reveal the surprising truth about kids and violent games.

The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up. Barbara Hofer & Abigail Sullivan Moore, $17.00

In our speed-dial culture, parents and kids are now more than ever in constant contact. Communicating an average of thirteen times a week, parents and their college-age kids are having a hard time letting go.

Until recently, students handled college on their own, learning life's lessons and growing up in the process. Now, many students turn to their parents for instant answers to everyday questions. And Mom and Dad are not just the Google and Wikipedia for overcoming daily pitfalls; Hofer and Moore have discovered that some parents get involved in unprecedented ways, phoning professors and classmates, choosing their child's courses, and even crossing the lines set by university honor codes with the academic help they provide. Hofer and Moore offer practical advice, from the years before college through the years after graduation, on how parents can stay connected to their kids while giving them the space they need to become independent adults.

Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age. Dorothy G. Singer, Jerome L. Singer, $35.50

Television, video games, and computers are easily accessible to twenty-first-century children, but what impact do they have on creativity and imagination? In this book, two wise and long-admired observers of children's make-believe look at the cognitive and moral potential, and concern, created by electronic media.

As Dorothy and Jerome Singer show, violent images in games and TV are as toxic as many observers have feared by stimulating destructive ideas and troubling aggression. But should all electronic media be banned from children's lives? Calmly and authoritatively, the Singers argue that in fact some screen time can enrich children's creativity and play, and can even promote school readiness. With guidance from parents and teachers, empathy, creativity, and imagination can expand and intensify in the electronic age.

i-SAFE Internet Safety Activities: Reproducible Projects for Teachers and Parents, Grades K-8. i-SAFE, $35.95

Most school-age children use the Internet every day. However, many possess naive attitudes about their online safety and can inadvertently engage in a range of high-risk behaviors. Developed by i-SAFE™, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to Internet safety education, this important resource offers a series of fun lessons and teachers' guides to help students in grades K-8 learn how to stay safe online.

Filled with activities, this easy-to-use guide helps elementary and middle school students develop their Internet skills while keeping safe.

It’s a Book. Lane Smith, $15.99

A mouse, a monkey and a jackass. And a book.

Kid Culture: the Hip Parent’s Handbook to Navigating Books, Music, TV and Movies in the Digital Age. Todd Tobias & Lou Harry, $16.95

This handy reference offers some sage advice and a few laughs on the best — and the worst — of kid culture.

Living Outside the Box: TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets. Barbara Brock, $19.95

Rather than a doom-and-gloom approach to why our kids should not watch TV, Barbara Brock has taken a more positive approach. In Living Outside the Box, we hear the voices of hundreds of families who live TV-free and about all the encouraging benefits this decision has brought to their lives.

For anyone — any family — considering cutting back on or eliminating television from their lives, this is an optimistic guide to life without TV.

Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Allison Pugh, $28.95

In Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture, Allison Pugh teases out the complex factors that contribute to how we buy (and) the stark inequalities facing American children. … Pugh masterfully illuminates the surprising similarities in the fears and hopes of parents and children from vastly different social contexts, showing that while corporate marketing and materialism play a part in the commodification of childhood, at the heart of the matter is the desire to belong.

The Material Child: Growing Up in Consumer Culture. David Buckingham, $26.95

Children today are growing up in an increasingly commercialized world. But should we see them as victims of manipulative marketing, or as competent participants in consumer culture?

THE MATERIAL CHILD provides a comprehensive critical overview of debates about children's changing engagement with the commercial market. It moves from broad overviews of the theory and history of children's consumption to insightful case studies of key areas such as obesity, sexualization, children's broadcasting and education.

In the process, it challenges much of the received wisdom about the effects of advertising and marketing, arguing for a more balanced account that locates children's consumption within a broader analysis of social relationships, for example within the family and the peer group. While refuting the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is adopted by many campaigners, it also rejects the easy celebration of consumption as an expression of children's power and autonomy.

Media, Gender and Identity. David Gauntlett, $39.95

This highly readable book explores theories about popular culture and the relationship between media and identity. Along with an outline of creative approaches to exploring the media’s influence on gender identity, Gauntlett discusses film, magazines, TV, self-help books, YouTube and more, to show how media plays a role in the shaping of self-perception.

Books in this series give readers a simple introduction to using computers, e-mail, and the Internet. Practice activities in each title help readers practice what they learn. In addition, Stay Safe boxes in each title teach readers how to use computers safely.

My First Internet Guide. Chris Oxlade, $9.95

My First Computer Guide. Chris Oxlade, $9.95

My First E-Mail Guide. Chris Oxlade, $9.95

The stereotype-laden message, delivered through clothes, music, books, and TV, is essentially a continuous plea for girls to put their energies into beauty products, shopping, fashion, and boys. This constant marketing, cheapening of relationships, absence of good women role models, and stereotyping and sexualization of girls is something that parents need to first understand before they can take action. Lamb and Brown teach parents how to understand these influences, give them guidance on how to talk to their daughters about these negative images, and provide the tools to help girls make positive choices about the way they are in the world.

In this insightful assessment of our relationship with the small screen, psychologist and broadcaster Dr. Aric Sigman reveals the alarming reality of what television is doing to us physically, emotionally, intellectually and socially. Remotely Controlled is much more than an indictment of the dangers of watching television. Sigman aims to draw our awareness to the glaring imbalance in our lives and show us how we can re-establish control away from the remote control. Remotely Controlled is a compelling read which will cause readers to take a step back and reassess our viewing habits.

Screen Time: How Electronic Media — from Baby Videos to Educational Software — Affects Your Young Child. Lisa Guernsey, $18.50

As a mother, Lisa Guernsey wondered about the influence of television on her two young daughters. As a reporter, she resolved to find out. What she first encountered was tired advice, sensationalized research claims, and a rather draconian mandate from the American Association of Pediatricians: no TV at all before the age of two. But, like many parents, she wanted straight answers and realistic advice, so she kept digging: she visited infant-perception labs and child development centers around the country. She interviewed scores of parents, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and media researchers, as well as programming executives at Noggin, Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Workshop, and PBS. Much of what she found flies in the face of conventional wisdom and led her to conclude that new parents will be best served by focusing on "the three C's": content, context, and the individual child.

The Space Place — We Have Lift Off! Catalyst Video Ltd., $65.95 (social skills DVD games)

The Space Place is designed to help young children have a better understanding of emotions and social interaction. The series features a space museum full of model space vehicles and rockets with friendly faces.  When George, the caretaker, locks up at night, all the models come to life and the fun begins!

Twelve episodes, each focusing on one emotion, are the central part of this DVD. Also included are interactive games and activities, a set of playing cards featuring emotions and a bonus CD with a special 3D game.

Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, $16.50

An innovative road map to help parents bring creative play, quality relationships, and a sense of confidence and personal safety back into their kids’ lives. Grounded in child development research, this is a practical, hands-on approach to creating a safe, open and imaginative environment in which children can flourish.

Teens Gone Wired: Are You Ready? Lyndsay Green, $19.95

TEENS GONE WIRED examines combines advice from dozens of parents and teens with a wealth of recommended sources, including links to many online support systems. Green emphasizes the critical role for parents in mediating their teens' experiences with both the digital and the real world. While the book is unflinching in acknowledging the trials that parents face today, it supports the author's optimism that parents are not only capable of doing a good job, they can have fun along the way.

Unplug Your Kids: a Parent’s Guide to Raising Happy, Active and Well-Adjusted Children in the Digital Age. David Dutwin, $19.95

Unplug Your Kids shows parents how to find the balance between technology and active lifestyles for their kids.

Video Games & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control. Hilarie Cash & Kim McDaniel, $20.00

Based on research and the authors’ clinical experience, Video Games & Your Kids explains what gaming addiction is, how much gaming is too much, and the affects gaming has on the body and brain. The authors give gaming advice on each stage of life; ages 2-6, elementary school years, adolescence, and adult children still living at home. Where there is a problem, the authors provide parents with tools that will help the parents successfully set appropriate limits for their children. It also explains the need to consult with professionals and use the process of formal interventions when the addiction is so severe that the parents are no longer able to manage the situation.