Other Publications of Note 234 Living Conditions: The Influence on Young Children’s Health—Special Issue of Early Childhood Matters Issue 118, June 2012, 54 pages. The Hague: Bernard van Leer Foundation. Available from: http://bernardvanleer.org/English/Home/Publications/Catalogue/Living-conditionsThe -influence-on-young-childrens-health.pdf This issue of Early Childhood Matters explores the impact of living conditions and the physical environment on children’s lives and is a must-read for anyone interested in child development and children’s environments. The issue draws from the perspectives of leading international researchers that speak to both the universal experiences of childhood across culture and place and the need for attention paid to tangible, local lived experiences. The issue begins with an editorial review by Selim Iltus, Research and Evaluation Officer for the Bernard van Leer Foundation, which covers the issue’s content and why the context of children’s environments is critical to the health of children and, ultimately, communities world-wide. The issue includes an additional ten short summaries of children- and youth-related community engagement projects and topics from around the world including Uganda, Israel, New Delhi, Peru, Brazil, Europe and the United States. Within each summary, there is a specific topic of concern related to children’s health and development. The author(s) of each article outline this concern, why it matters—often supported by statistics—and, when relevant, the aim of specific projects. Topics range from sanitation issues and related diseases to air quality and respiratory infections, to avoidable accidents, to the integral role nature plays in developing a sense of place, identity and environmental awareness. Several articles also touch on the difference between child perspectives and child-centered perspectives, why the two are not the same, and how well-intended planning can have unintended negative consequences for the children it seeks to benefit. While the statistics included within this issue can at times seem overwhelming and daunting, there is promise in the issue’s strong underlying theme of community engagement. In all of the projects reviewed from around the world, successful implementation pivoted on active community engagement and locally involved stakeholders. For many of the projects, it was the community, often including children and youth, who provided much of the outreach on the issue and helped to educate their neighbors on ways to improve the situation, not only for the health of their children, but for the survival of their culture. One of the issue’s most poignant statements regarding children’s participation in planning, by Pia Björklid and Maria Nordström, sums up, in my opinion, the point to all of this: But they [children] also need to have the right to be protected by society so that they are allowed to be children—that is, to play in and explore their local Other Publications of Note 235 environment and their town or city in conditions that are safe and promote their development (46). Whether you are interested in children’s physical, mental or emotional well-being, this compilation will no doubt provide you with additional insight into the ways in which our physical surroundings influence not only how we move, but how we think, feel and act. Review by Corrie R. Colvin Corrie Colvin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver and graduate affiliate of the Children, Youth and Environments Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests include place-based education, human-nature interaction, children’s natural play environments and the lifelong influence children’s interaction with nature may have on their lives. ...