by Patricia O. Quinn & Theresa E. Laurie Maitland & illustrated by Bryan Ische ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 15, 2011
Advice books abound, some more readable than others. This work should be numbered among the “others.” Starting with a...
This slender volume provides advice for teens with ADHD and learning disabilities on successfully making the transition to college.
Advice books abound, some more readable than others. This work should be numbered among the “others.” Starting with a discouraging caveat—only about 50% of teens with ADHD/LD will either still be enrolled in college or have graduated after five to six years—this effort has readers complete a self-assessment test. It includes topics such as Organizational Skills, Self-Knowledge, Daily Living Skills and Time Management Skills. Based on the results, readers are given advice on learning ways to manage in college. Teens should analyze their results, write goal statements and action plans, track their progress and evaluate and modify their plans. Each topic from the test has a chapter of advice, followed by a list of pertinent websites. In the Daily Living Skills section, the advice on laundry begins, “First concentrate on washing. No matter how you choose to instruct yourself, you need to learn about washing first.” While all the advice is probably worthwhile, the format is dry, sometimes condescending and often monotonously repetitive. It’s difficult to imagine busy, college-bound teens having the time to attempt the development of so many action plans and so much list-making.Pub Date: July 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4338-0955-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
by Dan Hofstadter ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 1992
For The New Yorker, Hofstadter has taken over the role Calvin Tomkins used to fill—as art chronicler: half critic/half profile- maker. And at this he is very, very good. In the five long pieces collected here—about Jean Helion, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Avigdor Arikha, David Bomberg and the subsequent generation of London painters (Kossof, Kitaj, etc.), and Richard Diebenkorn—he almost negligently scatters brilliant associational perceptions (why, for example, Cartier-Bresson the photojournalist was hardly different from C-B the surrealist: the same ``cretinous voyaging'') while being cannier than most art writers about the varieties and dilemmas—glorious both—of representational painting. He also writes (occasionally he posturingly overwrites) with a genuinely beautiful style. But what is a little disconcerting is the form of the articles: Hofstadter seems to appear in the company of the artists he writes about here not exactly as a journalist but as an instant intimate or friend; there is an air of relaxed offhandedness (``I got to know Richard Diebenkorn in 1986, a few years before he and his wife, Phyllis, moved from Santa Monica to Healdsburg, in northern California. Dick was already sixty-five then but a lot of his strict, formal, well-to-do Protestant background still showed''). This self-conscious relaxation of role carries over as well into what he has to say about the painters: He has scorn finally for the Londoners (``dungeon masters'') on account of their all-or-nothing aesthetic neuroticism and battles with life, while reserving his highest admiration for the artist who, like Diebenkorn, is serious without solemnity. Deflation of high artistic pretension and behavior in favor of pragmatic dilution always has been, editorially, a New Yorker stock-in-trade—and Hofstadter is particularly good at it. But the attractiveness of the interesting men (and most often quite interesting artists too) that he writes about seems finally more about personal style than art.
Pub Date: April 7, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-58111-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
by Kurt Chandler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1995
The textured perspective that emerges in candid and quirky interviews with gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth is marred by a reductive approach to sexuality. Journalist Chandler follows six teenagers over a few years, through crucial points in their coming-out processes. (The book grew out of a series of articles he wrote for the Minneapolis Star- Tribune.) Attempting to give a broad overview of the sexual- minority youth experience, Chandler devotes some chapters to the young people's (and, in some cases, their parents') personal stories and some to broad generalities about homosexuality and young people. The teens' narratives are often powerful; though there is a good share of coming-out clichÇs (``I always felt different,'' ``She was always such a tomboy,'' etc.), the author also includes the kinds of particularities that bring such stories to life. One girl, for instance, takes her mother to a gay nightclub so she can see what it's like; in another celebratory family moment, a father delights his daughter and her friends by joining them in a raucous lesbian-sex joke-telling session. Chandler, who is heterosexual, negotiates the diversity of queer youth culture more open-mindedly than most mainstream journalists, neither avoiding nor reviling drag queens, tattooed girls, and shirtless young women at pride marches. Unfortunately, the Homosexuality 101 sections are simplistic; in a chapter called ``The Roots of Homosexuality,'' Chandler reassures his readers ad nauseam that gay people do not ``choose'' to be gay and that an individual's essential sexual identity is fixed and unchangeable. Chandler's approach to homosexuality has the effect of unnecessarily distancing these kids from readers, who he seems to assume are straight and have never questioned their heterosexuality. The personal narratives here are compelling, but unfortunately, Chandler seems determined not to let his readers identify with his subjects. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2380-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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