So, you’re having a teenager? Congratulations/commiserations.

Worried about drugs? We recommend Valium, wine and HRT. Happy you survived the toddler tantrums? Let us introduce you to the eye roll, the cold shoulder and the incoherent mumble.

On the bright side, you’ve reduced your need for Google – your adolescent is now able to frequently correct, hector and lecture you with their strong opinion on everything. And if you feel tired, you’re not imagining it. Teen years are like dog years: for every year your teen ages, you age seven. You need a survival guide for the testing times ahead.

Friends, next-door neighbours and fellow mums of teens Sarah Macdonald and Cathy Wilcox have lived through it all and produced this straight-talking, not entirely sarcastic, informative guide to what for many parents are the most challenging – but interesting and exciting – years in the role.

From A is for Argumentative, Awkward and Angst, to Z is for Zits and Zzzzzs.

Despite efforts to widen participation, first-in-family students, as an equity group, remain severely under-represented in higher education internationally. This book explores and analyses the gendered and classed subjectivities of 48 Australian students in the First-in-Family Project serving as a fresh perspective to the study of youth in transition. Drawing on liminality to provide theoretical insight, the authors focus on how they engage in multiple overlapping and mutually informing transitions into and from higher education, the family, service work, and so forth. While studies of class disadvantage and widening participation in HE remains robust, there is considerably less work addressing the gendered experiences of first-in-family students.

This book examines the notion of identity through a multitude of interdisciplinary approaches. It collects current thinking from international scholars spanning philosophy, history, science, cultural studies, media, translation, performance, and marketing, each with an outlook informed by their own subject and a mission to reflect on a theme that is greater than the sum of its parts. This project was born out of a dynamic international and interdisciplinary pedagogical experience. While by no means a teaching guide or textbook, the authors' experience of sharing the module with their students reinforced the fluidity and elusiveness of identity and its persistent facility to escape disciplinary classification. Identity as a subject for analysis and discussion, and as a lived reality for all of us, has never been more complex and multi-faceted. Each chapter of this singular collection provides a lens through which the concept of identity can be viewed and as the book progresses it moves from ideas based in disciplinary contexts - biology, psychiatry, philosophy, to those developed in multi and inter disciplinary contexts such as area studies, feminism and queer studies.

This book explores a new approach to cultural literacy. Taking a pedagogical perspective, it looks at the skills, knowledge, and abilities involved in understanding and interpreting cultural differences, and proposes new ways of approaching such differences as sources of richness in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations. Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice balances theory with practice, providing practical examples for educators who wish to incorporate cultural literacy into their teaching. The book includes case studies, interviews with teachers and students, and examples of exercises and assessments, all backed by years of robust scholarly research.

Warning: Contains dancing, chocolate cake and an epic car chase. Molly cooks. Molly does the dishes. Molly gets her little brother Joe ready for school. Molly is only twelve, but she doesn't feel much like a kid any more. Now her mum is feeling better, maybe things will get back to normal. Maybe Molly can learn to be a kid again. A touching and funny story of family, friends and fitting in, Sarah McDonald-Hughes' play How To Be A Kid is ideal for seven- to eleven-year-olds to watch, read and perform. It was first produced in 2017 by Paines Plough in their pop-up theatre, Roundabout, in a co-production with Theatr Clywd and the Orange Tree Theatre. How To Be A Kid was named Best Play for Young Audiences at the 2018 Writers' Guild Awards.

This book explores a new approach to cultural literacy. Taking a pedagogical perspective, it looks at the skills, knowledge, and abilities involved in understanding and interpreting cultural differences, and proposes new ways of approaching such differences as sources of richness in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations. Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice balances theory with practice, providing practical examples for educators who wish to incorporate cultural literacy into their teaching. The book includes case studies, interviews with teachers and students, and examples of exercises and assessments, all backed by years of robust scholarly research.

Sarah Mac Donald explores childhood, adolescence, adulthood, marriage, and the death of a spouse in a series of poems marked by deep humanity, courage, and the language of triumph. These poems are heartfelt, yet direct, in their evocation of love, loss, and the daily battles of life.

After backpacking her way around India, 21-year-old Sarah Macdonald decided that she hated this land of chaos and contradiction with a passion, and when an airport beggar read her palm and insisted she would come back one day - and for love - she vowed never to return. But twelve years later the prophecy comes true when her partner, ABC's South Asia correspondent, is posted to New Delhi, the most polluted city on earth. Having given up a blossoming radio career in Sydney to follow her new boyfriend to India, it seems like the ultimate sacrifice and it almost kills Sarah - literally. After being cursed by a sadhu smeared in human ashes, she nearly dies from double pheumonia. It's enough to send a rapidly balding atheist on a wild rollercoaster ride through India's many religions in search of the meaning of life and death. From the 'brain enema' of a meditation retreat in Dharamsala to the biggest Hindu festival on earth on the steps of the Ganges in Varanasi, and with the help of the Dalai Lama, a goddess of healing hugs and a couple of Bollywood stars - among many, many others - Sarah discovers a hell of a lot more.

A BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of Ian Serraillier's classic wartime story. When the Germans march into Poland in 1941, the Balickis' happy family life is shattered. With their parents taken away by Nazis, Ruth, Edek and Bronia are forced to fend for themselves in the dangerous, war-ravaged city of Warsaw. When Edek is captured too, the girls are desperate. Then they meet orphaned street urchin Jan, who carries with him a talisman of hope: a silver sword paperknife that they recognise as having belonged to their mother. Realising that their parents may still be alive, Ruth and Bronia set off on an epic journey to Switzerland to search for them. With Jan by their side, they are determined to reunite the family - and their first step is to find Edek. But the road ahead is full of danger and hardship, and they will face many challenges along the way... This moving story of friendship, courage and solidarity stars Sarah McDonald Hughes as Ruth, Stephen Hoyle as Edek, Hester Cox as Bronia and Aqib Khan as Jan. Duration: 1 hour 30 mins approx.

“India is like Wonderland. In this other universe everyone seems mad and everything is upside down, back to front and infuriatingly bizarre . . .”In her twenties Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution, and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.
But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Macdonald’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Macdonald this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must find peace in the only place possible in India,” she concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death. Holy Cow is Sarah Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis, and Christians, and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis, and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and her sanity—can survive.