Child-Friendly Therapy: Biopsychosocial Innovations for Children and Families. Marcia Stern, $32.00

A treasure trove of creative tools and strategies to engage children in therapy. Now in paperback, Child-Friendly Therapy offers clinicians an array of inventive, multifaceted therapy techniques, from brain-based tips to family-oriented exercises.

Essential Proteen: a Life Skills Program for Helping Teens Succeed. Mia Sharon Adler, Facilitator's Manual $29.95; Student Journal $17.95

Adolescence is a time for dreaming, exploring, self-discovery, and independence. The ESSENTIAL PROTEEN curriculum nourishes teens with important life skills to help them successfully navigate and plan for their personal, academic, and future young adult lives. Students will learn how to set short and long-term goals, motivate themselves, recognize opportunities, handle changes, make effective decisions, discover their true selves, and transition successfully to college or work.Together, the Facilitator’s Manual and the Student Journal provide a well-designed and easy-to-use life skills program that can be used with large or small groups in schools and other settings.

Feeling Like Crap: Young People and the Meaning of Self-Esteem. Nick Luxmoore, $24.95

We use the word all the time, but what exactly is self-esteem, and how do young people develop it? Feeling Like Crap explores how a young person's self is constructed, and what might really help that self to feel more valued and confident. Through accounts of his individual and group work with young people, Nick Luxmoore demonstrates how listening to, engaging with and being respectful of young people can provide the support they need to help them repair their sense of self and offer them new possibilities and directions in life. This compassionate and thought-provoking book will be an invaluable resource for counsellors, teachers, youth workers, and anyone else working to help young people with self-esteem issues.

Full of Ourselves: a Wellness Program to Advance Girl Power, Health and Leadership. Catherine Steiner-Adair & Lisa Sjostrom, $51.95

This dynamic health-and-wellness education program addresses critical issues of body preoccupation and reduces risk for disordered eating in girls (grades 3–8). Emphasizing girls’ personal power and overall mental and physical well-being, Full of Ourselves contains a range of upbeat units that foster:

• Increased self and body acceptance
• Healthier eating and exercise habits
• Advanced leadership and media literacy skills
• A range of coping skills for resisting unhealthy peer and cultural pressures

This primary prevention curriculum has shown sustained, positive changes in girls’ body image, body satisfaction, and body esteem. Educators, health professionals, counselors, and parents will find Full of Ourselves the ideal resource for helping girls make healthy choices for themselves.

Group Activities for Kids Who Hurt: Providing Help through Loss and Transition. Sally Jo Blair, $25.95

This sensitive and insightful resource provides concrete, usable tools to help kids in grades 3 through 8 successfully deal with painful issues and provides specific group experiences that create an environment of safety and trust, and activities that help kids acknowledge and move through their pain.

A myriad of activities, discussion topics, reproducible experience sheets, and journal pages focus on the common denominator of hurt. This makes GROUP ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS WHO HURT a comprehensive manual for setting up and facilitating groups which provide guidance, peer support and healing insights.

• Divorce and separation
• Loss of a loved one
• Relationship struggles
• Physical or mental abuse
• Drug use in the home
• Incarceration of a parent
• Loneliness and isolation due to poverty, teasing, rejection or disability

Group Exercises for Adolescents: a Manual for Therapists, School Counselors & Spiritual Leaders, 3rd Edition. Susan Carrell, $68.95

This updated edition of Susan Carrell's best-seller provides a practical, concise overview of group work with adolescents, including dos and don’ts for group leaders, as well as potential pitfalls and hazards and how to avoid them. Ideal for therapists, school counselors, spiritual leaders, and other helping professionals, the manual addresses a wide range of today's hot issues for adolescents, including sex, alcohol, drugs, values and ethics, family dynamics, self-esteem, management of difficult emotions, peer relationships, and spirituality. Avoiding the usual “psychobabble," this no-nonsense guide discusses both behavioral and cognitive objectives, includes new exercises and is accompanied by a new companion teen journal.

Ideal for anyone who is developing a new program, revitalizing an existing one, or in need of a one-time group experience, this best-selling manual has been used successfully in schools, community settings, church/religious settings, court-ordered programs, and the private sector.

Group Play Interventions for Children: Strategies for Teaching Prosocial Skills. Linda Reddy, $53.95

Group play interventions are used to meet a broad range of developmental needs in children from various backgrounds. This book is for mental health practitioners working with children aged 5 through 12 to help them learn important social skills and self-control strategies such as making friends, asking for and offering help, controlling hands and feet, using appropriate words, and managing stress and anger. This book integrates the use of group play interventions and evidence-based cognitive behavioral techniques in child group training.

Author Linda Reddy lays out the grounding principles and research of group play interventions and sketches out the most common disorders and symptom sets for which children are referred for group training. She then offers practical suggestions for forming groups and for managing instruction and behavior, as well as a chapter on how to make the most of caregivers' skills and interests to maintain children's progress.

Step-by-step instructions are given for teaching, modeling, organizing, and coaching children through skill sequences and fun, developmentally appropriate games. Detailed lists of preparatory and follow-up actions are also provided, as well as tips on tailoring instruction to children's ages and special needs. Positive interactions are emphasized throughout the book, from parent interviews through implementation and questions for the children post-training.

Group Work with Adolescents: Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition. Andrew Malekoff, $35.95

This popular text provides essential knowledge and skills for conducting creative, strengths-based group work with adolescents. A rich introduction to the field, enlivened by numerous illustrations from actual sessions, the book provides principles and guidelines for practice in a wide range of settings. Andrew Malekoff covers all phases of group work, from planning to leave-taking, and highlights the value of self-reflection for successfully handling even the most challenging group situations.

How to Be Angry: an Assertive Anger Expression Group Guide for Kids and Teens. Signe Whitson, $34.95

Children often struggle to cope with anger, and angry feelings can boil over into aggression and destructive behaviour. This resource takes a different approach to anger, teaching children how to be angry effectively, rather than telling them not to be angry at all. This group program provides step-by-step guidelines for building anger management and assertive emotional expression skills through tailored lessons, group activities and thought-provoking discussions.

Suitable for use with children and teenagers aged 5-18; this engaging resource will help children to overcome self-destructive patterns of passive, aggressive, and passive aggressive behaviour. It will be of great use to educators, counselors, social workers, youth care professionals, psychologists and parents.

Large Group Guidance Activities: a K–12 Sourcebook, 2nd Edition. Joe Wittmen & Diane Thompson, $32.50

Presenting large group guidance units on developmental issues are effective ways to deliver services directly to students and to model successful group techniques for teachers. Activities are divided into six sections: Academic Survival Skills, Interpersonal Communication and Cooperation, Cross-Cultural Awareness and Communication, Decision Making, Personal Assessment and Awareness, and Responsible Behavior. Each activity is labeled according to the appropriate grade levels, K-12, and includes reproducible masters when necessary.

Resilience Builder Program for Children and Adolescents: Enhancing Social Competence and Self-Regulation. Mary Karapetian Alvord, Bonnie Zucker & Judy Johnson Grados, $50.95

A cognitive-behavioral group approach designed to help youth bounce back from life challenges, by increasing confidence, self-esteem, self-control and the use of effective coping strategies.

Small Group Counseling for Children: Grades K-2. Diane Senn, $34.95

Small Group Counseling for Children: Grades 2-5. Diane Senn, $37.50

These two ground-breaking books provide everything you will need to conduct effective small group counseling with children. They provide curricula for working with groups of children, and include a needs assessment (parent, teacher, and student) for each topic to help determine the specific needs of the group. In addition, they give a choice of skill building group session activities for each topic with a correlation chart to the needs assessment. Further, they provide parent/teacher letters and handouts to encourage reinforcement of the skills presented. They also include group energizers/icebreakers, reproducible pages, group forms and outlines, optional service learning assignments for students, and a post assessment for each group. This small group program is a comprehensive, creative new approach to small group counseling that strives for efficient and effective use of counseling.

The grades K-2 book features curricula on: self-concept, friendship, and school success.

The grades 2-5 book features: anger management, friendship, self-concept, and school success skills.

Talk with Teens about What Matters to Them: Ready-to-Use Discussions on Stress, Identity, Feelings, Relationships, Family, and the Future. Jean Sunde Peterson, $43.99

From test scores to bullying to family relationships, teens have a lot on their minds. When wrestling with questions and concerns, all young people can benefit from a safe, supportive place to "just talk" with caring peers and an attentive adult about the issues that really matter to them. TALK WITH TEENS ABOUT WHAT MATTERS TO THEM gives you the resources you need to create that place through guided small-group discussions. These discussions provide teens with opportunities for articulating their feelings, building self-esteem, affirming themselves, and more. The discussion sessions in this book:

• support teens' social and emotional development
• help teens feel more in control of their lives
• help build self-esteem and self-awareness in teens
• focus on topics important to teens, encompassing areas such as stress, identity, feelings, relationships, family, and the future
• give teens practice in problem solving and goal setting

Each discussion session is clear, self-contained, and step-by-step, and many sessions include reproducible handouts. Introductory and background materials offer practical tips and guidance, allowing even less-experienced group leaders to feel prepared and confident in their role. The included CD-ROM features all of the reproducible handouts from the book.

Teambuilding with Teens: Activities for Leadership, Decision Making, & Group Success (Book & CD-ROM). Mariam MacGregor, $39.99

Leadership isn’t just for a chosen few. All teens can practice the skills and attitudes leaders use. The 36 hands-on activities in this book make learning about leadership meaningful and fun while building character. Kids are called on to recognize each other’s strengths, become better listeners, communicate clearly, identify their values, build trust, set goals, and more. Each activity takes 20–45 minutes, so adults have a lot of flexibility in deciding when and how to use them. This book can be used as a supplement to the author’s Building Everyday Leadership in All Teens or on its own. The included CD-ROM (for Macintosh and Windows) features all of the reproducible forms from the book.

Thinking, Feeling, Behaving: an Emotional Education Curriculum for Children Grades 7-12. Ann Vernon, $45.95

Essential resources for helping students learn to overcome irrational beliefs, negative feelings, and the negative consequences that may result. These 2006 revised editions are packed with creative and easy-to-do activities. The activities include games, stories, role plays, writing, drawing, and brainstorming. Each activity is identified by grade level and categorized into one of five important topic areas: Self-Acceptance; Feelings; Beliefs and Behavior; Problem Solving and Decision Making; and Interpersonal Relationships.

Thinking, Feeling, Behaving is an emotional education curriculum based on the principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. The books are designed to be used in classroom or small group therapeutic settings.