In 1961, Ezra Jack Keats wrote and illustrated his first children’s book. It was called "The Snowy Day" and it told the story of Peter, a young, African-American boy in Brooklyn, enjoying the season's first snowfall. The book was immediately popular. Prior to its publication, no other mainstream children’s book had featured a black hero in a non-caricatured way.

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) is a dictionary that defines and classifies all mental health disorders. First published in 1952, the DSM is used by everyone from clinicians to pharmaceutical companies to policy makers. Since its inception, the DSM has been revised only four times — one such occasion was in 1980 when homosexuality was no longer defined as a mental disorder. In the fifth edition, another big change may come to the DSM. Autism is up for a redefinition which could potentially reduce the number of people considered "autistic" by half.

Many people made New Year’s resolutions this weekend, but four out of five will break their resolution, and a third of them will forget their intent entirely by February. While the reasons for not carrying out a resolution are diverse, one proven strategy to successfully following through is having a friend or loved one make resolutions for you.

Sam Childers was once a drug dealer whose work often turned violent, but in the summer of 1992, he attended a church revival and decided to abandon his life of crime. After traveling to war-torn Sudan to find a way to aid children there, he founded an orphanage with his wife in what is now South Sudan. Childers came on The Takeaway in September to discuss his life, his orphanage, and making amends.

The holidays are typically characterized as a time for joyous celebration with family and friends. But for many Americans, the reality of the holiday season could not be any more different. Over the last twenty-five years, the scientific community has grappled with the concept of loneliness, trying to quantify its presence in society in an effort to better understand the social phenomenon. The consensus seems to be relatively straight-forward: Americans have become increasingly lonely over time.

New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that fewer teenage girls are becoming mothers. The birth rate for American teenagers between ages 15 to 19 has fallen 6 percent, according to the most recent data. This is the lowest since record-keeping began.

A Pew Research Center report released Wednesday shows 51 percent of all adults in the United States are now married — a record low. In 2010, a survey also conducted by Pew found that four in ten Americans thought marriage had become obsolete, but found that most people who had never married (61 percent) would like to do so someday.

Some new numbers about the No Child Left Behind Act paint a bleak portrait of the country's education system. According to a report from the Center on Education Policy, 48 percent of the nation’s public schools did not meet No Child Left Behind's requirements for "adequate yearly progress," a percentage-based criteria for improvement set by individual states. However, students's performance on the national standardized test are not considered in AYP.

In Cleveland, Ohio an 8-year-old boy was removed from his home on the grounds that his severe obesity was the fault of his parental care. The young boy weighed over 200 pounds. For comparison, the average weight of an 8-year-old boy is about 60 pounds. The question isn't whether the boy was overweight, or whether his family could have done more in the 20 months that they were notified that his weight was a serious problem under consideration by the state. The question is whether or not foster care is really the best way to solve extreme obesity.

Perhaps the most common trade-off for working parents is the inability to give their kids home-cooked meals—even if they work in food service. John Besh, a working dad and James Beard award-winning chef who runs eight acclaimed restaurants, has written a book about his experiences trying to fix the gap between the food he prepares in his home and at work.

Takeaway co-host Celeste Headlee went on a swing through the West Coast recently where she visited with artists and newsmakers and took back her reporting. She had the chance to talk with multi-talented author and musician Colin Meloy. Colin is best known for his role as the lead singer and chief songwriter of the band The Decemberists. But Colin has also just written a children's book called "Wildwood" — his wife Carson Ellis illustrated the novel.

What's not to love about brisket? Author Stephanie "Stevie" Pierson is convinced that a good brisket will not only satiate your appetite but improve your life. Pierson wrote "The Brisket Book" after realizing that while the delicious dish is in many cookbooks it doesn't have one of its own. They're not hard to find either, as you can pick up a brisket at your local supermarket.

Over the past few weeks, The Takeaway has reported about student loan debt and rising tuition costs. President Obama recently unveiled a new program that he says will help lower the interest rates on student loans. But his strategy does not help students who graduated before 2012. As cash-strapped states continue to cut funding for public universities, tuition is likely to keep on rising. How should public universities balance budget cuts and tuition hikes? 

He plays one of the most recognizable characters in television history. He was mentored by the great Jim Henson. He has more daytime Emmys than most TV actors accrue in a lifetime. And yet, most days, he walks around the world, completely unrecognized by his fans. His name is Kevin Clash, and he is the subject of a new award-winning documentary called "Being Elmo," which is currently in limited release.

Sociologist Amy Schalet was born in the United States, but she grew up in the Netherlands. When she returned to U.S. for college, she was surprised to learn that most of her American-reared peers had never discussed sex with their parents. Most of her Dutch friends had open, long-running discussions with their parents on the topic. This discovery shaped Professor Schalet's research through graduate school and beyond. She's published her findings in a new book, "Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex."  

This year the price of college reached a record high. According to figures from an annual College Board report, the average cost of per year of tuition is up more 8.3 percent for public 4 year colleges and up 4.5 percent for private schools. The average college student now finishes school with between $22,000 and $28,000 of debt. In total, Americans currently owe nearly a trillion dollars in student loans — that's more than they owe on credit cards. President Obama addressed the issue of student debt in a speech in Denver on Wednesday, announcing a new program to lower monthly student loan payments.

The world's population is set to reach seven billion on Monday, October 31, 2011. And all this week, The Takeaway is talking about what this monumental number means for people, resources and the planet. Statistics in the U.S. show that the average American woman has 2.1 children. With these numbers the population balance should looks good for the U.S. But a new book shows that this is not the case.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced his plan for lowering the burden of student loan debt for people saddled with paying for the high cost of their education. The Takeaway asked listeners to tell us their stories about how they’re dealing with student loan debt. Ron Lieber, personal finance reporter for The New York Times, attempts to answer their queries.

From President Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation and President Obama's Race to the Top competition, to education reform experts like NCLB advocate turned critic Diane Ravitch and former Washington public schools superintendent Michelle Rhee, everyone seems to have a solution for fixing the nation's broken education system. It is easy to get lost among all these strategies, solutions and debates. But two educators have developed a strategy that they say is proven to have real results for both low-income students in charter schools and wealthy students in elite private schools.

Jennifer Granholm was the governor of Michigan from 2002 to 2010. Those eight years were some of the most turbulent in the history of the state. Governor Granholm led Michigan through a number of factory shut-downs, a serious recession with skyrocketing unemployment, and, of course, the auto bailout in 2008. Governor Granolm and her husband, Dan Mulhern, describe these challenges and much more in their new book, "A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future."