Overall, a valuable resource on this important topic.
A guide to help adults broach the dangers of sexting with preteens.
Recognizing that sexting is a significant parenting concern today, the authors created this book to give parents, teachers, faith leaders, and other adults who live and work with elementary- and middle school–aged young people tools to start a dialogue on the subject. After a brief introduction to some of the emotional, social, and legal consequences of sexting, the guide is then divided into four sections on sexting basics (e.g., what it is and how it affects the brain), sexting participation (both actively and as a bystander), how to avoid becoming a sexting victim, and related topics (e.g., determining readiness for a smartphone). Each chapter opens with a short explanation of the topic in a conversational style and continues with a realistic and accessible anecdote aimed at kids. Examples range from unsolicited locker-room snapshots through solicited nude photos to potential online predators. These are followed by conversation starters that avoid shaming young people or blaming any one gender; journal prompts and goal-setting exercises appear with blank lines for kids’ musings. Kid-friendly graphics featuring a multiracial cast further amplify the book’s approachable tone. The text addresses only heterosexual relationships, however, and one bully-prevention idea excludes some faiths by suggesting only joining a church youth group.
Overall, a valuable resource on this important topic. (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73363-357-4
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Bushel & Peck Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A rich and deeply felt slice of life.
Crafting fantasy worlds offers a budding middle school author relief and distraction from the real one in this graphic memoir debut.
Everyone in Tori’s life shows realistic mixes of vulnerability and self-knowledge while, equally realistically, seeming to be making it up as they go. At least, as she shuttles between angrily divorced parents—dad becoming steadily harder to reach, overstressed mom spectacularly incapable of reading her offspring—or drifts through one wearingly dull class after another, she has both vivacious bestie Taylor Lee and, promisingly, new classmate Nick as well as the (all-girl) heroic fantasy, complete with portals, crystal amulets, and evil enchantments, taking shape in her mind and on paper. The flow of school projects, sleepovers, heart-to-heart conversations with Taylor, and like incidents (including a scene involving Tori’s older brother, who is having a rough adolescence, that could be seen as domestic violence) turns to a tide of change as eighth grade winds down and brings unwelcome revelations about friends. At least the story remains as solace and, at the close, a sense that there are still chapters to come in both worlds. Working in a simple, expressive cartoon style reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier’s, Sharp captures facial and body language with easy naturalism. Most people in the spacious, tidily arranged panels are White; Taylor appears East Asian, and there is diversity in background characters.
A rich and deeply felt slice of life. (afterword, design notes) (Graphic memoir. 10-13)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53889-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
Readers who want to know when their jet packs and food tablets will be coming will find no answers in this mishmash of...
A Belgian import attempts prognostication.
Schutten opens and closes with the dead-cinch prediction that readers in 2030 will laugh at his views on where household tech, sustainable land and water use, medicine and robotics are heading in the near future. In between, he delivers debatable prophecies that microwave ovens will be superseded by unspecified new devices, that computer games will replace most toys and like airy claims. These are embedded in equally superficial surveys of the pros and cons of fossil and alternative energy sources, as well as cautionary looks at environmentally damaging agricultural and lifestyle practices that are in at least the early stages of being addressed. Conversely, he is blindly optimistic about the wonders of “superfoods,” carrying surveillance chips in our bodies and supersmart robots managing our lives. Uncaptioned photos and graphics add lots of color but little content. A closing section of provocative questions, plus endnotes citing news stories, blog posts and other sources of more detailed information, may give would-be futurologists some reward for slogging their ways through.
Readers who want to know when their jet packs and food tablets will be coming will find no answers in this mishmash of eco-sermons and vague allusions to cutting-edge technology. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58270-474-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beyond Words/Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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