A good resource for teens who don’t want to use adult cookbooks. (Nonfiction. 12-18)
This by-teens, for-teens cookbook focuses on specific ways teens can live a healthy, environmentally conscious life without sacrificing the food they love.
Early chapters define and present six green ideas. These include eating healthfully, seasonally, locally and organically, as well as vegetarianism and fair trade. The evenhanded presentation focuses on how these ways of eating can benefit both the individual as well as the entire planet. The recipes that follow are simple and utilize easily found ingredients. A photo and a quote from the contributing teen as well as its seasonality precede each recipe. Recipes for such favorites as homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread, vegetable smoothies and Oreo cupcakes are inexpensive and produce dishes that are portable and friendly to the teen palate. Sections feature snacks, DIY kitchen staples, entrées, desserts and more. Quick tips as well as ways in which a recipe might be altered for variety accompany many of the recipes. Cleanly laid out with photos of the teen contributors and the dishes themselves, this introduction to green eating is informative without being preachy. However, other than the fact that it is by teens, this resource fails to differentiate itself from the many other green cookbooks on the market.
A good resource for teens who don’t want to use adult cookbooks. (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-936976-58-4
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2014
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author.
Deaf, trans artist Man meditates on his journey and identity in this brief memoir.
Growing up in conservative central Pennsylvania was tough for the 21-year-old Deaf, genderqueer, pansexual, and biracial (Chinese/White Jewish) author. He describes his gender and sexual identity, his experiences of racism and ableism, and his desire to use his visibility as a YouTube personality, model, and actor to help other young people like him. He is open and vulnerable throughout, even choosing to reveal his birth name. Man shares his experiences of becoming deaf as a small child and at times feeling ostracized from the Deaf community but not how he arrived at his current Deaf identity. His description of his gender-identity development occasionally slips into a well-worn pink-and-blue binary. The text is accompanied and transcended by the author’s own intriguing, expressionistic line drawings. However, Man ultimately falls short of truly insightful reflection or analysis, offering a mostly surface-level account of his life that will likely not be compelling to readers who are not already fans. While his visibility and success as someone whose life represents multiple marginalized identities are valuable in themselves, this heartfelt personal chronicle would have benefited from deeper introspection.
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author. (Memoir. 12-18)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-22348-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Though awkward, this adaptation still makes for a hopeful and inspiring story.
This story, an adaptation for young people of the adult memoir The Other Wes Moore (2008), explores the lives of two young African-American men who share the same name and grew up impoverished on the same inner-city streets but wound up taking completely different paths.
Author Moore grew up with a devoted mother and extended family. After receiving poor grades and falling in with a bad crowd, his family pooled their limited finances to send him to Valley Forge Military Academy, where he found positive role models and became a Corps commander and star athlete. After earning an undergraduate degree, Wes attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. When the author read about the conviction of another Wes Moore for armed robbery and killing a police officer, he wanted to find out how two youths growing up at the same time in the same place could take such divergent paths. The author learns that the other Wes never had the extensive family support, the influential mentors or the lucky breaks he enjoyed. Unfortunately, the other Wes Moore is not introduced until over two-thirds of the way through the narrative. The story of the other Wes is heavily truncated and rushed, as is the author's conclusion, in which he argues earnestly and convincingly that young people can overcome the obstacles in their lives when they make the right choices and accept the support of caring adults.
Though awkward, this adaptation still makes for a hopeful and inspiring story. (Memoir. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-74167-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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