How Children Develop Book

How Children Develop is a tome of a textbook, with an incredibly appealing and structured design, making it both readable and easy to look things up in. It's an extensive, interesting and comprehensive book about developmental psychology, and manages to cover all relevant topics in the field adequately.

This is book is, unlike some others on the subject, not structured chronologically, i.e. beginning at a child's conception and growth, and ending as soon as it becomes an adult, but instead topically. It covers the following topics: prenatal development and the newborn period, biology and behaviour, cognitive development, infancy (seeing, thinking, and doing), language development, conceptual development, intelligence and academic achievement, social development, emotional development, attachment to others and development of self, family, peers, moral development, and gender development. After each chapter, there's room for a summary, a list of key terms, and some critical thinking questions.

Even though I have used this book academically as an introduction to developmental psychology, I would seriously be devaluing the scope of it if I were to say that it can only be used as such. It's an excellent textbook on the subject, perhaps the best I've encountered up until now, and it never gets truly boring (even for someone like me, who doesn't appreciate developmental psychology as much as other fields of psychology).

In short: interesting, engaging, informative, and extensive. A definite recommendation for anyone looking for a good book on developmental psychology that touches upon all its aspects, covers many interesting case examples, is well-organized, and still quite easy to read.