The Family Issues Series of the Today's World Collection includes four separate books: Going Back to School, Getting Married, Many Kinds of Families and Domestic Violence. The story in each book is approximately twenty pages in length and is followed by a variety of activities such as: comprehension questions, graphs, charts, puzzles, and suggestions for discussion and writing.

My experience has been that beginning readers enjoy these books because the stories are ones that students can readily relate to. The collection "explores the everyday challenges affecting the lives of many adults today in their families, communities and work." One man in our program, after reading Going Back to School, said, "I like this story because it could be about me." The topics, length of each story, size of print and the graphics in each book are appealing to the reader.

Students from other programs shared their feelings about this series:

Getting Married - "I learned about trusting the person for love and about understanding him or her."

Domestic Violence - "In this story, I found out how domestic violence, the victim and the abuser cycle work."

Many Kinds of Families - "This story made me think about all the different families you have if your parents split up and them marry someone else. Sometimes it's really hard."

Going Back to School - "I know how much it hurts if your child asks you to read something and you can't."

I highly recommend this series for the beginning reader.