The Encyclopedia of Child Abuse (Facts on File Library of Health and Living)

More than five hundred entries provide an overview of the problem of child abuse and its extent across the United States and around the world.

The fact that there is a market for a reference book on child abuse is obvious to anyone who reads the daily paper or watches the evening news. Tragic stories of abused children unfortunately are not rare, but neither, as the introduction to this volume points out, are they just a twentieth-century phenomenon.

The more than 500 alphabetical entries range from a sentence to several pages and are interdisciplinary and international in scope. Legal terms and landmark cases are included. There are medical definitions of terms such as Shaken child syndrome. Cultural and national perspectives on what constitutes abuse are examined, and there are entries for specific countries. Essay-length articles cover the details of a typical child abuse investigation and the characteristics of abusive parents and caregivers.

New entries have been added to update the first edition, which was published in 1989. Others entries have been revised. For example, Addiction, infantile now includes information on the legal issues surrounding the topic. Adolescent abuse gives more information on the long-term consequences of abuse. Updated and new laws are covered. Among the new entries is one for the Internet that discusses the problems of child pornography and solicitation that have resulted from the technology. More statistical information is provided, and statistics have been updated both in the body of the work and in the appendixes. Appendixes include lists of national and state organizations and texts of laws, including Canadian laws. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography and a well-done index.

This is a comprehensive survey of child abuse that will be of use in high-school, public, and academic libraries as well as professional collections. Libraries owning the first edition will want to replace it. RBB
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