Designed like an owner’s manual for a teenager’s car, this lively guide offers tips on “safety, maintenance, and operating instructions” for boys’ bodies and relationships. The excellent table of contents offers such chapters as “Under the Hood,” “Ignition System,” “Exterior Maintenance,” “Parking,” “Rules of the Road,” and “Road Hazards.” It is a thorough, engaging guide with advice on everything from washing jeans to washing genitals. The text is enlivened by cartoons, sidebars, diagrams, and humorous, ’50s-style photographs of cars, highways, road signs, and kids out on dates. The chapter on “The (Re) Production Line,” for example, pictures cars rolling down the assembly line, and the discussion of the mechanics of intercourse is accompanied by diagrams for assembling auto parts, complete with numbers and arrows. Along with the serious discussion is a darling photograph of a little boy using a long-spouted watering can to gas up a little girl’s play car. The section on “Avoiding Hazardous Conditions” opens with a photograph of an airborne stunt driver flying over parked cars. More than a sex-ed manual, this guide includes frank discussions of pornography, drugs, and the importance of good etiquette and respect in relationships. Teenage readers who see humor, not old-fashionedness, in the illustrations, will find a useful, engaging, and straightforward guide. A good bet for open-minded parents, teachers of health and sex education classes, and all libraries. (Nonfiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-89028-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
Eden’s emotionally raw narration is compelling despite its solipsism. (Fiction. 14-18)
In the three years following Eden’s brutal rape by her brother’s best friend, Kevin, she descends into anger, isolation, and promiscuity.
Eden’s silence about the assault is cemented by both Kevin’s confident assurance that if she tells anyone, “No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever,” and a chillingly believable death threat. For the remainder of Eden’s freshman year, she withdraws from her family and becomes increasingly full of hatred for Kevin and the world she feels failed to protect her. But when a friend mentions that she’s “reinventing” herself, Eden embarks on a hopeful plan to do the same. She begins her sophomore year with new clothes and friendly smiles for her fellow students, which attract the romantic attentions of a kind senior athlete. But, bizarrely, Kevin’s younger sister goes on a smear campaign to label Eden a “totally slutty disgusting whore,” which sends Eden back toward self-destruction. Eden narrates in a tightly focused present tense how she withdraws again from nearly everyone and attempts to find comfort (or at least oblivion) through a series of nearly anonymous sexual encounters. This self-centeredness makes her relationships with other characters feel underdeveloped and even puzzling at times. Absent ethnic and cultural markers, Eden and her family and classmates are likely default white.
Eden’s emotionally raw narration is compelling despite its solipsism. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4935-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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
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