Since the beginning of human history, bears have been regarded as animals of great power. Ethnobotanist and cultural anthropologist Wolf Storl, who spent years in the wilderness with bears, explores the fascinating relationship between bears and humans, including the history, mythology, healing lore, and biology of this formidable creature. Storl takes the reader from the bear caves of the Neanderthals to the bear-worshipping Siberian tribes of today, from the extinct cave bear to the modern teddy bear. Bears were traditionally seen as a kind of "forest human" under whose shaggy fur a king or a god was hidden, he explains. Vividly illustrating the power of myths and fairy tales to reveal more than scientific treatises about the true nature of beings--especially in the case of bears--Storl restores this magnificent animal to its rightful place at the forefront of the human imagination as well as among the dwellers of the forest.

Lo maps the deprivation and richness of a rural girlhood and offers an intimate portrait of the woman—tender, hungry, hopeful—who manages to emerge. In a series of lyric odes and elegies, Lo explores the notion that we can be partially constituted by lack—poverty, neglect, isolation. The child in the book’s early sections is beloved and lonely, cherished and abused, lucky and imperiled, and by leaning into this complexity the poems render a tentative and shimmering space sometimes occluded, the space occupied by a girl coming to find herself and the world beautiful, even as that world harms her.

This book offers speech and language therapists, and other allied health professionals, a practical resource for working in a distinctive way with children and young people, and their parents, to achieve their ‘best hopes’ from therapy. The authors share a wealth of knowledge and experience from the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering about how they use Solution Focused Brief Therapy to enhance their practice. This resource manual: Provides a step-by-step guide to starting solution-focused conversations, having follow-up meetings, drawing attention to what’s working, and ending well. Illustrates work with a broad range of clients who stammer, including clients with additional physical, learning, and emotional needs. Demonstrates the benefits of working systemically with children and young people and their parents or carers. Supports therapists to develop skills in working collaboratively with clients on what they want to achieve from therapy. Gives examples of how to ask helpful questions and have hope-filled conversations. Considers the benefits and challenges of working in a solution-focused way. Describes how to adapt solution-focused conversations according to the client’s age and stage. Presents a range of applications of SFBT including in groups and in clinical supervision. The manual is illustrated by a rich variety of case examples which brings the material to life and enables the reader to apply the principles to their own setting. It is an essential practical resource for therapists hoping to develop their skills in empowering parents and in supporting children and young people towards living their best life.