FAMILY : A How-To Guide to Safer Children

Carolyn Anderson wastes no time with understatement in her workbook, “How to Protect Your Child From Becoming a Missing Person.” Where children’s safety is concerned, Anderson says, there’s no room for subtlety: “I decided to do this because my goddaughter was kidnaped last year in Philadelphia and killed.”

The workbook she developed is a combination storybook, coloring book, picture album, personal safety checklist, emergency telephone directory and fingerprinting chart. It’s designed for parents and children to work on together, and teaches kids how to avoid being attacked, what to do if assaulted, how to get help and how to identify the attacker.

Part I contains a story of two children separated from their mothers in a mall. One can’t tell security guards how to contact relatives. The other knows the way to react and even thwarts a potential kidnaper in the process.

Other sections instruct the children how to give “important information” about themselves, their neighborhood and school and how to describe parents, brothers and sisters and the baby sitter.