Imperfect but potentially helpful.
A mental health guide for early-adolescent concerns.
While many mental health guides for the age group extol the mind-body connection, emphasizing sleep, a healthy diet, and exercise to ward off anxiety, this book goes beyond these principles to explore ways to reshape negative thoughts into more positive ones. Assembled by a team at the London-based self-help publisher, the conversational text is divided into chapters on kid-relevant topics. The first and lengthiest chapter considers parents, such as why they are annoying and don’t always follow their own rules. Through real-world scenarios, examples from literature, and a scattering of art reproductions (all with White subjects and mostly European in origin), the authors ask readers to see things from a different perspective—in this first chapter, to consider their parents as adults who are fussy out of love and want good lives for their children. Subsequent chapters focus on screen time, bullying, anger, friendship, divorce, body image, the pressures of gender norms, and more related topics. In each chapter, important questions or ideas, such as “Gender doesn’t say what you are supposed to be like,” are highlighted; numerous chapters also include space for self-reflection. Stewart’s friendly, full-color illustrations are consciously diverse in representation of race and family structure. Intermittent Briticisms will not deter readers, but the text does stereotype homeless people in one instance and at the same time persistently uses the term “addiction” instead of “substance-use disorder,” and an anti-perfectionism exercise strews words such as “twits,” “idiots,” and “stupid” about liberally.
Imperfect but potentially helpful. (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912891-19-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: School of Life
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A well-intentioned description of life before birth. The illustrations make use of photographs (including ultrasound) and artist’s drawings, often in the same image, and these are well used to clarify the text. How babies grow and develop inside the womb is both described and illustrated, and while the tone is one of forced cheer, the information is sound. Also offered are quite silly exercises for children to experience what life in the womb might be like, such as listening to a dishwasher to experience the sounds a baby hears inside its mother’s body, or being held under a towel or blanket by an adult and wiggling about. The getting-together of sperm and egg is lightly passed over, as is the actual process of birth. But children may be mesmerized by the drawings of the growing child inside the mother, and what activities predate their birth dates. Not an essential purchase, but adequate as an addition to the collection. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-894379-01-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Occasionally clever—fifth-grade boys will love it.
“There is a lot of nonsense written about the human body,” writes the author, “and this book is no exception.”
Though not quite making good on his promise of “100 percent fact-free chapters,” (he does accurately describe “chondrolaryngoplasty”) Griffiths’ anatomical tour in general steers clear of anything that would be marked as correct on a test. From “Ears can be big or small, depending on their size” to “Capillaries are the larval form of butterflies,” he offers pithy inanities about 68 mostly real body features. Though he closes every entry with “That is all you need to know about…,” he then goes on to regale readers with the news that the epiglottis was named after a Greek philosopher and other “Fun Body Facts.” Similarly, noting that his illustrations “may not be scientifically accurate” (the understatement of the decade), Denton nonetheless provides on nearly every spread profusely labeled, free-association cartoon views of each body part. These are filled out with tiny figures, mechanical apparatus and miscellaneous junk. Though serious young researchers may be disappointed to find the “Private Parts” pages blacked out, a full index follows to provide ready access to any references to poo, pus, farts, drool, “sneeze-powered missiles” and like essentials.
Occasionally clever—fifth-grade boys will love it. (Humor. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-36790-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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