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UNDECIDED

NAVIGATING LIFE AND LEARNING AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

A helpful guide full of good, sensible advice to teens feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of major life transitions.

A sympathetic, practical self-help guide for teens facing the end of high school and unable to decide what to do next.

The logical direction for most high school students is continuing their education, whether in a vocational program, a community college or a four-year university. The pressures of the expectations, the preparation and choosing the best option can be overwhelming. And what about the one-third of high school graduates who choose not to continue their education? What is the best path for them? Enlist in the military? Work full time? Travel? Volunteer? Morgan’s handbook outlines the many different options available to teens after high school and provides helpful suggestions on how to pursue each path efficiently and successfully. She covers everything from SAT preparation, writing personal statements and internships to trade school pros and cons and information on what to expect from a life in the military. Anecdotes, brainstorming activities, checklists and journal exercises encourage readers to critically reflect on their options.

A helpful guide full of good, sensible advice to teens feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of major life transitions. (resources, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14 & up)

Pub Date: April 8, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-936976-32-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Zest Books

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014

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LOOKING BACK

A BOOK OF MEMORIES

A unique format for a memoir—Lowry (Stay!, 1997, etc.) offers up quotes from her books, dates, black-and-white photographs, and recollections of each shot, as well as the other memories surrounding it. The technique is charming and often absorbing; readers meet Lowry's grandparents, parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren in a manner that suggests thumbing through a photo album with her. The tone is friendly, intimate, and melancholy, because living comes with sorrow: her sister died of cancer at age 28, and Lowry's son, a pilot, died when his plane crashed. Her overall message is taken from the last words that son, Grey, radioed: "You're on your own." The format of this volume is accessible and it reflects the way events are remembered—one idea leading to another, one memory jostling another; unlike conventional autobiographies, however, it will leave readers with unanswered questions: Who was her first husband—and father of her children? Why are her surviving children hardly mentioned? Why does it end—but for one entry—in 1995? It's still an original presentation, one to be appreciated on its own merits.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-395-89543-X

Page Count: 189

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000

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THINGS GET HECTIC

TEENS WRITE ABOUT THE VIOLENCE THAT SURROUNDS THEM

A startling series of testimonies about urban violence from New York City teens. These first-person essays on sociological issues first appeared in New Youth Connection, a newspaper for and by students of New York City high schools. By choosing the best essays on the theme of violence, the editors have compiled a book more eloquent than a thousand police reports. For the writers live in housing projects; they know violence all too well. So why do kids kill each other? In their own words, “Kids nowadays are ready to kill . . . over the dumbest things.” You’ll hear talk of trafficking in gold chains—one young man is stabbed for a good fake. Yet the cause of violence is rarely just material. Instead, it erupts when one gets —dissed— (disrespected) too often in a life where to hold onto a shred of dignity is rare. To their credit, two of the teenage boys here write about why they will not pack a pistol: because they’ve seen innocent loved ones get killed, and because it gives the owner a dangerously distorted sense of power. While all the killing seems to involve young men who treat life “like a reset button in a video game,” some of the most abused victims are the young women in their lives—or, in one case, a homosexual young man who cannot take part in their bad-mustached, bad-mouthed behavior. Among the women, one Chinese girl, not dressed provocatively enough to earn the usual stream of catcalls from the corner full of unemployed truants, is angry enough to say, after a bottle is thrown at her, that it’s as though a female in the city “has a bullseye on her body.” Unheard voices crying for a hearing.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1998

ISBN: 0-684-83754-4

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998

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