by Patricia Wooster ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2017
A solid resource for teens seeking advice on planning their futures.
Wooster offers teens too shy or scared to be themselves the stories of others who have embraced their true selves.
In peppy prose, the author exhorts teens: instead of following the crowd, focus on “discovering and becoming the person you want to be”—aka igniting your spark. Chapters not only provide suggestions for igniting readers’ sparks in school, hobbies and activities, and relationships, but how to face failures and boost willpower. The text is peppered with spark igniters and extinguishers, role-plays, quizzes, and examples of all kinds of success stories. It's a bit cluttered and doesn't have a lot of flow, but the information contained is solid. Perhaps there's too much emphasis on not being one of many—what about teens who are authentically interested in doing the same as most of their peers?—yet the positive, cheerleading tone will certainly reassure any teens who are scared of being “different.” The teen success stories are drawn from all fields, from science to art, business to philanthropy. The section on toxic friendship is particularly valuable.
A solid resource for teens seeking advice on planning their futures. (notes, further resources) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58270-565-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beyond Words/Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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by Ginny Rorby ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2011
Thirteen-year-old Sarah’s new classmates at Glades Academy don’t welcome her—she’s there on scholarship, and her mother works in the school cafeteria. On a field trip to the Everglades, Sarah seizes the chance to get away by sneaking off on an airboat ride through the saw-grass marsh with the guide’s 15-year-old son, Andy, taking only her backpack, a camera and some mosquito spray. A stop at a remote fishing camp ends in disaster when the boat sinks, and they’re stranded, surrounded by alligators and snakes, with half a bottle of Gatorade and a can of SPAM. Andy knows what they’re up against, but Sarah refuses to believe that they must leave the tiny island to trudge the 10 miles back to land. Wildlife and vegetation are vividly described; Sarah’s fear is palpable in scenes of near-disaster, and readers will cheer when she and Andy make it safely out of the swamp after five days. However, the first-person narrative is uneven, marred by gaps that make it hard to fully visualize some situations, and there are too few transitions to support some rather sudden instances of closeness between Sarah and Andy. Rorby cleverly offers only subtle hints that Sarah is African-American and Andy is white until late in the story, adding depth to this survival story framed within the story of an outsider. (Adventure. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7613-5685-1
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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by Ginny Rorby
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by Gloria Whelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2011
With her father away fighting Turks and her mother so often “under the weather,” still grieving over long-dead son Edward, 15-year-old Rosalind James has grown independent visiting the bazaar with her Indian friend, Isha, and causing comment among the other British officers’ wives at the club. Rosalind’s headstrong and helpful nature gets her into trouble quickly when her father returns from the front in 1919. He fires a man too old to sweep the family house, and the old sweeper sells his grandchild to feed the family. Rosalind saves the baby but nearly finds herself sent to England for a proper education. Only her mother’s fear that Rosalind will die as Edward did allows Rosalind to stay in her beloved India. However, when she becomes interested in what the famous Gandhi is preaching (not to mention the handsome Max Nelson); Major James packs Rosalind off to live with her aunts. How will a girl raised in India survive the cold climes of a homeland she’s never visited? What will her sweet Aunt Louise and her prickly Aunt Ethyl make of their impetuous niece? National Book Award winner Whelan’s characters are more types than people, and there is little of the flavor of the subcontinent in this overstuffed, occasionally pleasant tale of a plucky young woman in Raj-era India. (Historical fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0931-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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by Gloria Whelan ; illustrated by Kirbi Fagan
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by Gloria Whelan ; illustrated by Nancy Carpenter
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