An insightful book to help parents and educators become smart, sensitive and strong caregivers.
A longtime social worker offers advice on raising adolescents in his debut.
Bentley presents a variety of practical, thoughtful approaches for parents and educators to help children navigate their emotions in adolescence. The author contends there are three stages of adolescence, and in each stage, the child struggles while attempting to reach certain levels of autonomy. He discusses how adolescents can experience anxiety, fear and sadness as they move on from childhood and how problems arise as teens struggle to separate from their families. “Adolescents must cross the threshold of fear into adolescent responsibilities, self-discovery, and independence,” Bentley writes. The author, a school social worker, has more than 20 years’ experience working with children and teens with behavioral problems, and he discusses specific cases here, including triumphs and tragedies. He also relates touching, funny personal stories about his own childhood in a large family and reflects on how his own aberrant behavior was influenced by his desperate need for one-on-one time with his parents. Throughout the book, Bentley focuses on growth and healing, mainly through psychoanalytic methods. However, he also explains methods which teens can practice on their own. He highlights the importance of celebrating rites of passage, using teachable moments and encouraging teen employment. He advises that teens use journals for self-reflection and dream analysis. He strongly urges limiting computer time; children who excessively use computers become “trapped in the dependency of the digital world of cyberspace,” he writes. The book does get a bit repetitive; at the end of each chapter is a bulleted list of key points, which are repeated at the book’s end. The author also doesn’t discuss mental health issues that may have an organic cause, such as chemical imbalances, which might necessitate medication as a form of treatment. Overall, however, Bentley has created a strong foundation for readers to try to better understand children and teens.
An insightful book to help parents and educators become smart, sensitive and strong caregivers.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475945096
Page Count: 272
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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