'Consumer Kids' Reviews
Times Book Extract, 21st January 2009
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Times, 21st January 2009
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Times Leader, 21st January 2009
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Times, 24th January 2009
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Telegraph Front Page, 22nd January 2009
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Telegraph, 22nd January 2009
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Guardian, 26th January 2009
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Reuters, 28th January 2009
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Guardian, 4th February 2009
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Independent, 7th February 2009
Consumer Kids stories today on the WH Smith and playboy angle for the book.
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Daily Mail, 10th February 2009
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Telegraph, 10th February 2009
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Islam on Line, 11th February 2009
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To-day programme, 14th February 2009
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Telegraph Book Review, 13th March 2009
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Financial Times Book Review, 11th May 2009
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House of Lords, 8th May 2009
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"Anyone concerned with children should read this book. It is fascinating and disturbing at the same time."
Chris Kelly, Chair of NSPCC
Most parents would be shocked by the scale and sophistication of today's marketing to children. This is a landmark book, full of ideas and solutions for reclaiming childhood for children."
Oliver James, author of “Affluenza”
"Consumer Kids shows that children are now spending more time in front of a screen than with their parents or in class. This book is vital reading for all of us concerned with how technology is shaping the minds of future generations."
Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director, Centre for the Future of the Mind, Oxford University
"The targeting of children for commercial purposes, using as they do all the seductive wizardry of modern technology, creates shoppers instead of citizens, and has become a rampant contagion, an abuse that corodes a child's liberty of thought and being and erodes individuality and humanity. As a tool of propaganda and indoctrination such commercial pressure on the young is effective and powerful because it is insidious. Many of us have felt this to be true for a long time. Here is a vitally important book that proves the case conclusively. Every MP should read it, every minister, every family."
Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Laureate
“This book provides a remarkable account of the way the commercial world manipulates the tastes and spending patterns of children and young people. It goes far to explain how the consumer greed that was at least partly responsible for the global financial crisis is insidiously nurtured. Harmful effects go further. It turns out that in our child population the more materialistic children are, the more likely they are to suffer from low self-esteem and poor family relationships. Can anything be done to reduce the pressure on children to buy, buy, buy? Again there are very helpful messages here for parents, teachers and children and young people themselves. Some schools are doing a brilliant job helping the young to withstand the tsunami of advertising that floods their lives. This book is a must-read for parents and teachers, indeed for anyone concerned with the welfare of our children. “
Philip Graham, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry, Institute of Child Health, London