A clear and helpful overview.
A lucid, basic introduction to key emotions, their positive and negative effects, and their management.
This brief book’s goal is to enable teens to know their feelings so that they can make informed decisions about their actions; it balances information with some practical strategies. After three introductory chapters addressing the book’s relevance to teens, defining emotions, and explaining how emotional intelligence functions, chapters separately consider love, anger, sadness, anxiety, jealousy and envy, guilt and shame, joy, and well-being. Each emotion is described and analyzed as an experience (broken down into physical, mental, and behavioral components), followed by a section on myths and truths about it, suggestions for living with the emotion, and one mini-exercise to develop emotional awareness. The author, a clinical psychologist, addresses teen readers in a serious, sympathetic, professional tone leavened by short anecdotes, like the case of a boy who was comfortable with strangers but paralyzed around his friends: He hadn’t understood that his behavior stemmed from anxiety. The book’s goal is to provide readers with the words and concepts to identify and understand their emotions. The information is valuable, reassuring, and sometimes thought-provoking, but the layout and design make it harder to absorb: Although there is some variation in font and text size and color, there is just one graphic and few bullet-pointed lists to break up the paragraphs; illustrations might also have added to the book’s appeal.
A clear and helpful overview. (index) (Nonfiction. 13-18)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9798885540001
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today.
A beautifully heart-wrenching graphic-novel adaptation of actor and activist Takei’s (Lions and Tigers and Bears, 2013, etc.) childhood experience of incarceration in a World War II camp for Japanese Americans.
Takei had not yet started school when he, his parents, and his younger siblings were forced to leave their home and report to the Santa Anita Racetrack for “processing and removal” due to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The creators smoothly and cleverly embed the historical context within which Takei’s family’s story takes place, allowing readers to simultaneously experience the daily humiliations that they suffered in the camps while providing readers with a broader understanding of the federal legislation, lawsuits, and actions which led to and maintained this injustice. The heroes who fought against this and provided support to and within the Japanese American community, such as Fred Korematsu, the 442nd Regiment, Herbert Nicholson, and the ACLU’s Wayne Collins, are also highlighted, but the focus always remains on the many sacrifices that Takei’s parents made to ensure the safety and survival of their family while shielding their children from knowing the depths of the hatred they faced and danger they were in. The creators also highlight the dangerous parallels between the hate speech, stereotyping, and legislation used against Japanese Americans and the trajectory of current events. Delicate grayscale illustrations effectively convey the intense emotions and the stark living conditions.
A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today. (Graphic memoir. 14-adult)Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60309-450-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Top Shelf Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2019
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