Coping With

Updated on Jan 18, 2024

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Authors Peter Corey, Kara May
Books Coping with Parents, Coping with Teachers, Coping With Girls/ Boys, Coping with School, Coping with the Family

The Coping With series of books is a series of books aimed at 11- to 16-year-olds, written by Peter Corey and published by Scholastic Hippo. The first book, Coping with Parents, was released in 1989, and the series continued until 2000, with the last book being Coping with Cash. The books take a humorous look at issues which affect teenagers and how to cope with these issues. The books are all generally built using the same basic structure:

The first chapter is generally addressed to the reader before buying the book and persuading them to buy it.

The author then introduces the (fictional) team of researchers who helped him write the book. Usually, the team includes 'Elderado Dingbatti', an escaped lunatic who frequently falls in love with pieces of furniture and confuses himself with Eldorado, the unsuccessful soap opera.

Then follows a humorous description of how the subject of the book (such as education or currency) has developed through the ages.

After this follows the A-Z section, which usually takes up most of the book. This section contains various elements related to the book's subject, arranged alphabetically. Every letter is used, which results in 'cheat' subjects only tenuously linked to the book itself e.g. "Zoological Friend (pet)" or "Xams (Exams): If your spelling is this bad, maybe higher education isn't for you!".

Finally, the book ends with appendices and an afterword from the author.

The titles in the series, in order, are:

The Television Show

The books success led to, in 1994, a one-off television special on Channel 4 called Coping with Grown-ups, shown as part of Channel 4's Look Who's Talking strand, featuring shows made by children. This was followed by Coping With Christmas in 1995, and a 6-part series across the 1997-1998 new year: Holidays, School, Cool, Relatives, Girls, Boys. These won multiple awards, including a BAFTA.

References

Coping With Wikipedia

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