Caring for Your School-Age Child: Ages 5-

This newest child-care guide from the American Academy of Pediatrics concentrates on the middle years of childhood. To make sure that parents don't become complacent after making it through their child's infancy, toddler and preschool years, the introduction warns that years five to 12 are most definitely not ``a time when nothing much happens.'' This successor to 1991's highly popular Caring For Your Baby and Child is encyclopedic. Schor (an associate professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine) and his contributors cover subjects ranging from runny noses to racism, with ten chapters devoted solely to such school-related issues as homework and learning disorders. Uniformly bland prose and a determinedly nonjudgmental, continuously reasssuring approach, however, make for less than compelling reading. Mothers and fathers with five or more years of parenting experience may yearn for less encouragement and more direct, forcefully opinionated points of view, and readers searching for answers to particular problems might be better served by a more specifically focused child-care book. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)