Individually, these titles will provide valuable input for many a PSHE lesson. With their colour photographs, bullet points, punchy quotations and generously spaced text, they have a down-to-earth, tabloid feel about them. They are simultaneously undemanding and engaging; they read easily and, in varying degrees, are overtly persuasive.

This, of course, is their point. They are not impartial; they are educative. What slightly diminishes the value of the books, taken as a series, are the variations in their objectivity. While the possible health benefits of a glass or two of red wine and the “comfort” provided by a cigarette are frankly admitted, the physical and social dangers of over-drinking and smoking are hammered home in no uncertain, even “preachy”, terms.

Similarly, in Why Do People Join Gangs?, the comforts of belonging to a group (especially for a lonely child) are not ignored, but the damage done by gangs and gang warfare is made explicit. But because this volume tries to cover every type of gang from the Ku Klux Klan and the Yardies, Triads and Mafia down to street corner drug-dealers and primary school playground bullies, it is much less focused than the others.

The most successful title, Why Do People Take Drugs?, is the least dictatorial and therefore the most credible. While stressing the dangers and problems of dependency, it spells out the benefits of medicinal drugs.

It emphasises the social and legal acceptability of caffeine and alcohol , and summarises the arguments for the legalisation of some drugs. “Why should farmers who grow marijuana be punished when farmers can grow tobacco without fear?”

In contrast (and despite not eating meat myself) I find the vegetarian book too loaded, partly because it ranges over too wide an area, embracing fox-hunting, BSE and religious dietary laws.

It is also the most explicitly campaigning volume with mini-features on celebrity vegetarians (Richard Gere, Linda and Paul McCartney, Martina Navratilova and Brad Pitt), photos of obese “fast food eaters” and exaggerated arguments that animals pollute the environment. It’s also odd to find it in a series that otherwise deals exclusively with “problems”.

David Self