The micro seems to be a particular victim of the Puritan work ethic. It can't be good unless it's being useful. This book indicates how non-expert parents or teachers can ensure children have some ulterior purpose to their game-playing besides just having fun.

Three adventures - The Hobbit, Valhalla and Snowball - are covered before a chapter on writing your own. A fifth chapter deals with The Quill.

The author, an English teacher, first used The Hobbit with a class of low-ability third year pupils and discovered - surprise, surprise - that they showed unusual initiative and enthusiasm. In fact, they even wanted to take the book home with them (Unheard of!). No advice is offered on setting up, etc, but the author managed and so, presumably, can you. Especially if you don't mind taking advice from your 'low ability' pupils who may know more about computers than you.

Each chapter covers the learning skills required and developed, as well as how learning objectives worked out in the classroom. A nice touch is the reproduction of pupils' reports on the adventures and snippets of their written work.

Harriet Arnold