A valuable instructional resource for anyone invested in understanding and helping young people.
Longtime child services professional Kearney provides concrete, practical strategies in this guide to working with children and young adults ages 6 to 18.
Few would argue that working in youth development, whether in a paid or volunteer capacity, is an easy job. The awareness of children’s needs and interests requires patience, compassion and, crucially, extensive training, which many in the field do not receive. Kearney’s resource fills that gap by offering clear instruction to anyone involved in youth programs, including tutors, counselors, youth ministers and group leaders. (The introduction provides an extensive list of intended readers.) The book’s unfussy organization—with sections arranged by age and broken down into physical, cognitive, social and emotional development—ensures quick access to relevant information. The topics covered range from a child’s self-evaluation to peer influence, gender relations, language skills, appearance and group dynamics. While there’s a consistent message of positivity, the advice and activities are far from monotonous. Instead, Kearney supplies specific tools applicable to distinctive age groups. For instance, whereas those working with children ages 6 to 8 are encouraged to help develop motor skills through appropriate computer games, individuals working with 15- to 18-year-olds will find tips pertaining to texting etiquette and cyberbullying. Elsewhere, the generality of advice such as “teach younger children how to resolve conflicts” and “offer nutrition and cooking activities” allows interpretation and creativity. Children “mature at different rates and possess different temperaments,” Kearney says, which means that those working with youth require flexibility for any sort of structured, activity-based program. Given the wide scope of the book, some of the advice is necessarily broad, but as Kearney notes before introducing a helpful selection of further resources, this “is a starting point, not an endpoint.”
A valuable instructional resource for anyone invested in understanding and helping young people.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4917-1935-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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