The Optiomistic Child

'Dolphin Music for the Inner Child' combines the talents of flutist/composer Christa Mitchell and keyboardist/composer Mike Rowland into a suite of gentle instrumentals inspired by the rhythms of water and the wisdom of dolphins. Simple and unobtrusive, tracks such as 'Tranquility', 'Dreamtime Dolphin', 'A Gentle Message of Hope', and 'Crown Chakra' certainly live up to their names with their undulating flute and synth melodies and dolphin recordings. The liner notes also include a bittersweet Finnish story about a mermaid who falls in love with a young fisherman and tells him the secrets of her people, with tragic results. A pretty, soothing album, 'Dolphin Music for the Inner Child' is an above-average collection of new age instrumentals.

Unlock the secrets of the mysterious fairy realm in the third installment of the award-winning Dream Chronicles® series, Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child. Discover hidden clues and challenging puzzles as you join Faye on her quest to save her daughter from the clutches of Lilith and reveal the secret prophecy of The Chosen Child in this all-new hidden object adventure with unexpected twists.

Over the past 20 years a substantial sociological literature devoted to the study of children and ‘childhood’ has developed. Much of this literature has stressed the ‘socially constructed nature of childhood’ and asked us to evaluate critically society’s attitudes towards children and their perceived roles. More recently there has developed an explicit attempt to draw much of this literature together, to ‘theorize children’ and set out the parameters for child-related research (James et al., 1998). How far does this ‘new sociology’ paradigm match the concerns of writers in the child labour field and to what extent do the insights provided by this ‘new’ approach help us to fully understand the plight of the child labourer?

The third instalment in the Dream Chronicles series, Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child is another visually stunning Myst-like adventure that transports players into a fantasy world of fairies. Like its predecessors, the excursion is immersive and fun but over all too quickly. Taking place soon after the events of the second game, Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze, The Chosen Child begins with Faye waking up with no recollection of her past or who she really is, except that she keeps having dreams that she has a husband and a daughter who's taken by the Fairy Queen of Dreams. Guided by a good-looking man who communicates with her through a crystal ball (those who have played previous games will quickly figure out who it is), Faye sets out to save her child once more. She's thwarted at every turn, though, by mischievous fairies who seem to be doing everything they can to impede her progress with their magic in the form of mini-games and brainteasers that must be solved to move on.

How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the children studied are shown to develop quite differently from monolingual children. The authors demonstrate significant interactions between the children's developing grammars, as well as the important role played by language dominance in their bilingual development. Based on original research and using findings from the largest available multimedia bilingual corpus, the book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in child language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact.