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
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future.
An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).
Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about same-sex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends. Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter. Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth. However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side. Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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