As a single mother of two young children, Charlotte set out to build a new life. She leaves her entire family behind in Virginia for the opportunities Ohio offered to her and her family. With just a high school education, no money, and completely alone, she redefined herself into a woman destine for success. After years of long hours working, many sleepless nights filled with worry, building new friendships, and raising two children, Charlotte blended herself into small town life amongst the corn and soy fields of Centerburg, Ohio. Her two sons, Trent and David, were given a life better than the one she had as a child. She had done what every mother dreamed of doing for her two boys. Just as life was starting to blossom with the full fruits of her success, tragedy entered her home. Cancer took from her what had taken years to build. Not only did the disease destroy her, it destroyed the lives of her two teenage sons. They would be the ones who would feel the full hurt of a broken home. The Average American Son looks closely at the effects cancer has on the lives of those left behind to put the pieces back together. Death was just the beginning of many pains Charlotte's sons would endure before rebuilding their own lives.

Media and the American Child summarizes the research on all forms of media on children, looking at how much time they spend with media everyday, television programming and its impact on children, how advertising has changed to appeal directly to children and the effects on children and the consumer behavior of parents, the relationship between media use and scholastic achievement, the influence of violence in media on anti-social behavior, and the role of media in influencing attitudes on body image, sex and work roles, fashion, & lifestyle. The average American child, aged 2-17, watches 25 hours of TV per week, plays 1 hr per day of video or computer games, and spends an additional 36 min per day on the internet. 19% of children watch more than 35 hrs per week of TV. This in the face of research that shows TV watching beyond 10 hours per week decreases scholastic performance. In 1991, George Comstock published Television and the American Child, which immediately became THE standard reference for the research community of the effects of television on children. Since then, interest in the topic has mushroomed, as the availability and access of media to children has become more widespread and occurs earlier in their lifetimes. No longer restricted to television, media impacts children through the internet, computer and video games, as well as television and the movies. There are videos designed for infants, claiming to improve cognitive development, television programs aimed for younger and younger children-even pre-literates, computer programs aimed for toddlers, and increasingly graphic, interactive violent computer games. - Presents the most recent research on the media use of young people - Investigates the content of children's media and addresses areas of great concern including violence, sexual behavior, and commercialization - Discusses policy making in the area of children and the media - Focuses on experiences unique to children and adolescents

An estranged bi-racial couple must confront their feelings about race and bias after their son is detained by the local police following a traffic stop incident. Their disparate histories and backgrounds inform their assumptions as they try to find out what happened to their son.