Intended for a younger audience, Hodder's series seeks to emulate the successful BBC Watch book Then and Now by contrasting modern social phenomena with those common earlier in the century. Emphasis is placed upon personal memories and anecdotes, with questions which are designed to actively involve the young reader and point to parallels and contrasts between past and present. However, the page layouts, multifarious typefaces and organisation of information on the page can sometimes confuse rather than illuminate. Content is variable - an admirable feature is the coverage of education for special children in Schools, but the series suffers from attempting to deal with issues too complex for the intended age range (such as the question of child safety in The Generation Gap). And there are occasional lapses into sloppy writing: 'When your grandparents were young they would not have had . . . kebabs or chop suey to eat. Regardless of cultural roots? The dangers of over-simplifying history, distorting it to fit into convenient blocks and page formats are apparent in all the above titles. Yet all three series will be seen as useful by schools. The Hodder books offer an opportunity for children to compare everyday life then and now, and serve an immediate educational need. The Portrait of a Decade allows the examination of an important event in a year, regardless of whether it was part of the decade's perceived trends. The Franklin Watts series offers most in its clarity and production standards and points the way forward for other publishers.