Pam Schweitzer

Alice and Jack Hike the Grand Canyon is a fictional picture book perfect for families with young children considering a challenging hike. Grand Canyon National Park has almost six (6) million visitors per year (second most visited national park) with less than one percentage (1%) going below the rim. Alice and her brother, Jack, along with their Mom and Dad are hiking to Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for spring break. Alice describes her and her brother Jack's journey of preparing for and eventually hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Alice needs to face her fear of heights since there are sections of the canyon that are steep. Both kids learn about hiking etiquette and how to respond to minor mishaps. Alice and her brother forge a special respect and appreciation of this iconic natural wonder of the world and value the preparation involved in having a successful hiking trip.

Reminiscence is a vital way to stimulate communication and promote confidence and self-worth in people with dementia. This practical guide is designed to give those who care for people with dementia a clear sense of how reminiscence can be used to greatly improve their quality of life. The book explores how reminiscence can contribute to person-centred dementia care and contains detailed descriptions of activities that can be used in a group setting, for one-to-one reminiscence at home or in a variety of care settings. Based on ideas developed and tested internationally over a period of ten years, the book offers imaginative approaches to reminiscence and a wealth of resources for use in a wide range of situations. The book includes advice on organising a reminiscence project and provides a useful planning tool for group sessions. Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today highlights the value of reminiscence for those with dementia and is an essential guide to good practice for family and professional carers.

Reminiscence theatre is about seeing and realising the dramatic potential in real life stories. It takes verbatim memories as the basis for theatre scripts, using the experiences of older people as a source of artistic productions and therapeutic creativity. This book is a comprehensive guide to the nature, practice and therapeutic effects of reminiscence theatre. Drawing on examples from a range of real-life case studies, Pam Schweitzer provides practical advice on the process of taking an oral history, creating from it a written script and developing that into a dramatic production, on whatever scale. The book outlines five components of key significance that the form affords: artistic development through creating original productions; cultural development, by creating reminiscence theatre in multi-cultural contexts, including dual-language productions; educational development through the intergenerational sharing and enactment of memories; psycho-social development for older people by reliving and reshaping past experiences; and health care, by using improvised reminiscence drama therapeutically with people with dementia and their carers. This book will be of great interest to theatre workers, social work professionals and carers of older people, arts therapy practitioners and students in these fields.