Concluding with an annotated list of online resources and an index, this guide will be a boon for teen fitness buffs, if not...
Emphasizing a moderate approach to physical activity and balanced eating, this fitness guide for teen girls will be most useful to those who are already motivated.
Easy-to-read chapters offer advice on topics such as the benefits of healthy habits, fitting activity into the regular school and weekend day, and stress relief. Sample workouts offer simple, illustrated instructions that often require little or no equipment. Likewise, tips about healthy meals suggest foods that can be eaten raw or prepared with a minimum of fuss. Beyond the basics, there is concise information offered about subjects that include organic produce, eating disorders and High Intensity Interval Training. Yet the distinctly positive tone of the guide does not always work. The authors’ suggestion that a good attitude is one of the most important elements to fitness is likely true, but it’s hard to imagine many teens suddenly being won over by the insistence that gym class can be fun. It’s also unlikely they will thrill to some of the more didactic maxims offered here: “By being committed to making yourself the best you can be, you’ll find that getting fit is empowering—not dreadful.”
Concluding with an annotated list of online resources and an index, this guide will be a boon for teen fitness buffs, if not couch potatoes. (Nonfiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: March 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-936976-30-0
Page Count: 126
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be.
An exuberant guide to LGBT life takes the stance that “being L or G or B or T or * is SUPER FUN.”
Speaking with candor, humor, and enthusiasm, Dawson addresses topics from coming out to sexually transmitted infections to sex apps. With irreverent chapter titles like “Stereotypes Are Poo” and a chatty narrative voice, the tone is largely upbeat, though the author also touches on “some MEGA-SAD FACE topics” like discrimination. Easily readable tables and humorous cartoons further liven up the presentation. To add more perspectives, segments from interviewees who represent areas of the LGBT spectrum not represented by the author himself are also included. Chapters on sex and apps like Grindr are helpfully matter-of-fact, and readers hear from people who choose casual sex as well as those who prefer emotionally intimate relationships. The book is a U.K. import, and while U.S.–based readers shouldn’t have much trouble understanding Briticisms like “fancy” or “shag,” some of the anti-discrimination laws referenced won’t apply. More troubling, the book’s efforts to support transgender readers are undermined by persistent, thoughtless affirmations that biology really is destiny—for instance, when the author debunks the myth that “gay men are ‘girls’ ” with a jokey “Penis? Check! Yup, gay men are, in fact, male.”
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be. (glossary, resources) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1782-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys.
The acclaimed author of Between the World and Me (2015) reflects on the family and community that shaped him in this adaptation of his 2008 adult memoir of the same name.
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’80s, Coates was a dreamer, all “cupcakes and comic books at the core.” He was also heavily influenced by “the New York noise” of mid-to-late-1980s hip-hop. Not surprisingly then, his prose takes on an infectious hip-hop poetic–meets–medieval folklore aesthetic, as in this description of his neighborhood’s crew: “Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front of your girl.” But it is Coates’ father—a former Black Panther and Afrocentric publisher—who looms largest in his journey to manhood. In a community where their peers were fatherless, Coates and his six siblings viewed their father as flawed but with the “aura of a prophet.” He understood how Black boys could get caught in the “crosshairs of the world” and was determined to save his. Coates revisits his relationships with his father, his swaggering older brother, and his peers. The result will draw in young adult readers while retaining all of the heart of the original.
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys. (maps, family tree) (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-03-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
