Place function

Hi gurus,

I am very very new to Illustrator so and still learning all the nice stuff but I encounter a problem

I have a file in which I added a few text , then I brought one jpeg using the place feature but it does not resize, it’s too small and I want to resize it a little bigger by pulling from corner and middle, stretching the image, hope you know what I mean, but  it does not do that , when picked it moves the hold thing and does not stretch , what am I doing wrong????

also is it possible to use the place feature to import many jpeg files to use one as background ???

Thanks for any help I can get gurus.