 Yvonne
Collins and Sandy Rideout, Totally
Me, the Teenage Girl's Survival Guide, Adams
Media, 2000. Brief chapters, clear language, use of bullet points,
just the right "voice" for talking to adolescents makes
this a stand-out book for adolescent girls. I'd suggest it would
work best for those well into adolescence--maybe the 14-17-year-old--rather
than the pre-teeners.
Get it at amazon.com at a 20% discount!
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Stepliving for Teens: Getting Along
with Stepparents, Parents, and Siblings, by
Dr. Joel D. Blick and Dr. Susan S. Bartell, Price, Stern, Sloan,
2001, paper.
For about $5, teens who want
to know how to cope with their lives in a stepfamily can get
some excellent advice and tips from the good doctors who authored
this book. Younger kids can understand it too -- it's written
for ages 8 and up.
Here are some of the questions/concerns
kids and teens may have that the book tries to address:
- fear of being forgotten when
the biological parent and stepparent have a child of their own
- wanting to move out, live
with the other family
- feelings of losing closeness
and trust with the biological parent
- the way money is spent
Both authors are psychologists
who specialize in family relationships. This one is highly recommended
-- parents, get it for a child you know.
--at
a discount--
 We
Were There, too! - Young People in U.S. History, by
Phillip Hoose, Farrar Straus Giroux, NY, 2001.
This is the book I gave to
my 14-year-old nephew this Christmas. Studs Terkel calls Hoose's
book, "Exhilarating and revelatory history...MUST reading
for today's youth--as well as their elders."
So tell me, did you know that
most of the sailors on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria
were adolescents? One of them, Diego Bermudez, is the first
subject of Hoose's book. He was 12! He was taken aboard as a
page. His responsibility? - reminding everyone of their guard
duty and doing the dirty work noone else wanted to do.
Hoose traces the impact on
history of young people's presence and activities from Columbus'
first voyage right through to the era of environmentalism and
AIDS. In our era we find the story of Ryan White from Kokomo,
Indiana, a hemophiliac, going to school as an HIV-positive student,
and Kory Johnson of Maryville, Arizona, who started "Children
for a Safe Environment" when she was only 9, after losing
her sister to illness caused by well water contaminated by industrial
cleaners.
I count 67 portraits in all;
they include boys and girls and young people of every race and
creed. It is truly an American book and celebrates the best of
what this country offers.
The book is beautifully produced,
in large format (it's about 10x10 inches), with tons of pictures.
The author cites the sources for the information he presents.
Howard Zinn, author of A
People's History of the United States, comments: "This
is an extraordinay book--wonderfully readable, inspiring to young
and old alike, and unique. I know of nothing like it."
I can't think of a more inspiring
and affirming gift for a young person this holiday season. And,
you can save $7.80 (a 30% discount) on it at amazon.com and help
this web site at the same time.
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