ARAJI, Sharon K., SEXUALLY AGGRESSIVE CHILDREN: Coming to Understand Them. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997, 246 pp., S24.50 softcover. This lays out a new field of social science study concerned with preadoleseent children who exhibit sexually aggressive behaviors towards other children. Sexually aggressive children are defined as those who are twelve and younger, who exhibit patterned behaviors of sexuality (which are too advanced for their ages) in conjunction with aggression (force, coercion, secrecy) towards other more vulnerable children. With chapter co-authors Rebecca L. Bosek and and Elizabeth A. Sirles, Araji provides a thorough review of research studies and includes correspondence with service providers. They identify, label and explain who these children are, what their social and psychological characteristics and risk factors look like, and how social service providers are responding to them in the United States. Araji argues that sexually aggressive children are produced in homes where physical violence and sexual abuse can be extreme. Aggression, anger, conflict, neglect and little support are common. Children are exposed to sexualized adult behaviors which may range from poor sexual boundary maintenance to genital contact and even intercourse. These children in turn exhibit coercive sexually aggressive behaviors towards other children. Araji argues that a culture of denial refuses to see children as capable of initiating aggressive sexuality and this inhibits adequate social service responses. Yet she argues that the physical abuse and aggression towards children may be more salient in explaining these behaviors than sexuality per se. She reviews the variations in system response across the United States which include legal responses such as charging children who demonstrate culpability with a sexual crime or sexual harassment; developing social service responses such as tools for identification, education and psychotherapy for children and their families, and developing community responses with training for schools, the media and other service providers. In coming to understand sexually aggressive children, this is strongest in its literature review and in covering current social service project responses. It provides an overview and a state of the art of an emerging field. However, in the work in progress nature of the text (which is how Foreward-writer William Friedrich encourages us to approach it), the book reads like the beginning of a dissertation. …