When Ashley discovers a turn-of-the-century doll it is just the first of several puzzling events that lead her through the hedge and into a twilight past where she meets Louise, an ailing child whose beloved doll has mysteriously disappeared.

A suspenseful story of unexpected connections between present and past. Ashely and her mother need their new apartment to work out, but everything Ashely does seems to upset the irritable and unforgiving landlady. When Ashley makes friends with the girl next door, Kristi, they uncover a wooden box containing a well-loved turn-of-the-century doll. Ashley wants to keep the doll for herself, but Kristi has other ideas. So does the doll's original owner, a girl who died decades ago, but whom Ashley meets when she follows a mysterious white cat through a hedge. Can Ashley bring peace to the girl and resolve her own present-day challenges?

“Checkmate to the black king...” begins the eerie missive found by Bella. It had been hidden in a pub’s wall along with a cache of toys, a child’s clothes, and a century-old photograph of two children, one of whom is a little boy holding the same doll found in the wall with the note. Who, or what, is the black king, and why is the writer of the message frightened for their life? Who are the children in the photograph? What is the link between the hidden items and a chess game? And most puzzling of all, how is it possible that the abandoned hundred-year-old doll is familiar to members of Bella’s family? Using forgotten photographs, memories, and the game of chess, Bella and her friend Tamsin learn the secrets of the doll in the wall.

This timely and innovative book provides a detailed history of marketing to children, revealing the strategies that shape the design of toys and have a powerful impact on the way children play. Stephen Kline looks at the history and development of children's play culture and toys from the teddy bear and Lego to the Barbie doll, Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He profiles the rise of children's mass media - books, comics, film and television - and that of the specially stores such as Toys 'R' Us, revealing how the opportunity to reach large audiences of children through television was a pivotal point in developing new approaches to advertising. Contemporary youngsters, he shows, are catapulted into a fantastic and chaotic time-space continuum of action toys thanks to the merchandisers' interest in animated television. Kline looks at the imagery and appeal of the toy commercials and at how they provide a host of stereotyped figures around which children can organize their imaginative experience. He shows how the deregulation of advertising in the United States in the 1980s has led directly to the development of the new marketing strategies which use television series to saturate the market with promotional "character toys". Finally, in a powerful re-examination of the debates about the cultural effects of television, Out of the Garden asks whether we should allow our children's play culture to be primarily defined and created by marketing strategies, pointing to the unintended consequences of a situation in which images of real children have all but been eliminated from narratives about the young.

They call New Orleans the Big Easy. The moniker comes, in part, from the French saying laissez les bons temps rouler. Let the good times roll. The name is a misnomer. There is nothing easy about living and growing up in New Orleanss Eighth Ward. My mother told me God created the world as a garden. A peek and a promise of what is to be seen in heaven. She also taught me that God allowed the devil access to the garden. Access and permission to tempt earths mortals. My mother told me we should all try to hide from the devil. To do so she believed we should pass through life as much a shadow, a silhouette to the devils eye, as possible. That is a difficult task for the pious. It is even more difficult in New Orleans, a city made famous by its history and traditions. Traditions and history that include temptations, vices, corruption, Mardi Gras, and voodoo. My name is Jehan Henri. This is the story of my silhouette in the garden we call earth.

International history of dolls and a discussion of their meaning and use.