Julie Porter can't wait to start karate lessons in gym class even though Charlie Cashman and the other boys say she's too small to be any good. But Julie carefully watches the teacher, Mr. Ogata, and works hard at mastering each karate move. That doesn't stop Charlie from teasing Julie--taunting her to try to karate kick him. But Julie doesn't want to. She knows the best karate students never try to fight. Can she show Charlie and his friends who's tougher--without losing her cool?

From arranged marriages to online dating, this four-volume work presents everything from personal accounts to empirical evidence to document what creates love in our culture as well as around the world. The field of biology views "love" as a hard-wired mammalian drive, akin to thirst and hunger. In contrast, psychology views love from a social and cultural perspective where our drive to find love—and our responses to it—are highly dependent on societal norms. In The Psychology of Love, esteemed author and educator Michele A. Paludi examines love through all lenses, thereby providing readers a deeper understanding of the ways we can express caring, sensitivity, empathy, and respect toward one another. Each chapter in this comprehensive four-volume work includes a scholarly overview of empirical research and theories about the psychology of love. In addition, individuals' own definitions of love are included. Special attention is paid to accepted standards of love across a variety of cultures, the ways individuals express liking and love across the lifecycle, and patterns in dissolutions of friendships and romantic relationships, making note of gender and race differences.

Think you know all there is to know about action movies? Well, think again. 1000 Amazing Action Movie Facts is chock full of fascinating and unusual facts about classic (and not so classic) action movies. Blockbusters, B-movies, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Seagal, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, superheroes, James Bond, Die Hard, Predator, Robocop, Fast and the Furious, martial arts, guns, sequels, casting, explosions, kill counts, and so on. Prepare to enter the explosive and pulse pounding world of action movies!

When teenagers began hanging out at the mall in the early 1980s, the movies followed. Multiplex theaters offered teens a wide array of perspectives on the coming-of-age experience, as well as an escape into the alternative worlds of science fiction and horror. Youth films remained a popular and profitable genre through the 1990s, offering teens a place to reflect on their evolving identities from adolescence to adulthood while simultaneously shaping and maintaining those identities. Drawing examples from hundreds of popular and lesser-known youth-themed films, Timothy Shary here offers a comprehensive examination of the representation of teenagers in American cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. He focuses on five subgenres—school, delinquency, horror, science, and romance/sexuality—to explore how they represent teens and their concerns, how these representations change over time, and how youth movies both mirror and shape societal expectations and fears about teen identities and roles. He concludes that while some teen films continue to exploit various notions of youth sexuality and violence, most teen films of the past generation have shown an increasing diversity of adolescent experiences and have been sympathetic to the particular challenges that teens face.

New Vampire Cinema lifts the coffin lid on forty contemporary vampire films, from 1992 to the present day, charting the evolution of a genre that is, rather like its subject, at once exhausted and vibrant, inauthentic and 'original', insubstantial and self-sustaining. Ken Gelder's fascinating study begins by looking at Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and Fran Rubel Kuzui's Buffy the Vampire Slayer – films that seemed for a moment to take vampire cinema in completely opposite directions. New Vampire Cinema then examines what happened afterwards, across a remarkable range of reiterations of the vampire that take it far beyond its original Transylvanian setting: the suburbs of Sweden (Let the Right One In), the forests of North America (the Twilight films), New York City (Nadja, The Addiction), Mexico (Cronos, From Dusk Till Dawn), Japan (Blood: The Last Vampire,

The book focuses on individuals writing in the '90s, but also includes 12 classic authors (e.g., Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, J.R.R. Tolkien) who are still widely read by teens. It also covers some authors known primarily for adult literature (e.g., Stephen King) and some who write mainly for middle readers but are also popular among young adults (e.g., Betsy Byars). An affordable alternative to multivolume publications, this book makes a great collection development tool and resource for author studies. It will also help readers find other books by and about their favorite writers.

Sequels are not always a bad thing. They don't have to be terrible. We can all think of great sequels. But for every good sequel there are a host of truly terrible sequels. Sequels to films that didn't even need a sequel, sequels that were rushed into production with no script, sequels so preposterously belated no one could even remember the original film. If there is one constant in the world of film it is unnecessary and terrible sequels. So, let's lift the veil over the most misguided and inept sequels ever produced and explore the worst sequels of all time!

Film, Television and Cinema.

Big Night (1996), Ratatouille (2007), and Julie and Julia (2009) are more than films about food—they serve a political purpose. In the kitchen, around the table, and in the dining room, these films use cooking and eating to explore such themes as ideological pluralism, ethnic and racial acceptance, gender equality, and class flexibility—but not as progressively as you might think. Feasting Our Eyes takes a second look at these and other modern American food films to emphasize their conventional approaches to nation, gender, race, sexuality, and social status. Devoured visually and emotionally, these films are particularly effective defenders of the status quo. Feasting Our Eyes looks at Hollywood films and independent cinema, documentaries and docufictions, from the 1990s to today and frankly assesses their commitment to racial diversity, tolerance, and liberal political ideas. Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli find women and people of color continue to be treated as objects of consumption even in these modern works and, despite their progressive veneer, American food films often mask a conservative politics that makes commercial success more likely. A major force in mainstream entertainment, American food films shape our sense of who belongs, who has a voice, and who has opportunities in American society. They facilitate the virtual consumption of traditional notions of identity and citizenship, reworking and reinforcing ingrained ideas of power.