Filtering self help through a pop-culture lens, motivational speaker Shipp explores the challenges and situations teens encounter in the course of their adolescence. The guide goes from dealing with backstabbing friends to pursuing dreams to career advancement and touches on health, wealth and more. There’s a phony sort of hyperbole that dominates the text: The author’s attempts to emphasize the need for constant examination end up portraying adults and everyday life as corrupt. Mentors earn a grudging respect, but only after the author works to scare teens into believing every adult is out to create carbon copies of themselves. Constant straw-man arguments cheapen the advice and suggest that easy decisions and solutions are possible. Placing teens into either/or scenarios denies them the opportunity to push boundaries and explore their limits and hollows out the essential message. Though he employs contemporary references and self-deprecating humor, Shipp obscures his positive message through scare tactics and skewed scenarios. (Nonfiction. YA)