Dear Teen Me Review

Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories)   TITLE: Dear Teen Me EDITORS: E. Kristin Anderson & Miranda Kenneally PUBLISHER: Zest Books PUBLICATION DATE: October 31, 2012 PAGES: 192 MY RATING: 

 

BACK COVER BLURB: Growing pains are an essential part of teenage life, for better or for worse. Some "mistakes" turn into positive, life-changing experiences, and some apparent triumphs seem, in retrospect, like low points. Some first kisses leave you feeling on top of the world, and others can make you want to hide under a rock. In Dear Teen Me, your favorites YA authors -- including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, Tom Angleberger, and Carrie Jones -- revisit their critical moments from their young lives and offer advice and guidance to their teenage selves. So pick a page, and find out...

• Who found true love at 18?
• Who wishes she'd had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard?
• And who skipped prom to go to a Grateful Dead concert, only to wind up stranded?

The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So whether you're a theater kid, a band geek, a bad boy, a good girl, a loner, a stoner, a nerd, or a job, you'll find friends -- and a lot of familiar faces -- in Dear Teen Me.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: You could easily look through the table of contents to find a story that relates to your situation, or you could read it through cover to cover, which is what I did.

I love the Q & A features. I wish there were more of them. It was interesting to me to see the different responses everyone gave to the same question. 

 

There wasn't as much advice in the letters as I thought there would be. Many of the letters were just authors retelling an event of their lives.

I think this book would have been good for me to read while I was in high school. It would have given me insight into how other teens were feeling and what different people were going through.


COVER: I like the cover. It is interesting to see pictures of authors from their high school days and compare them with how they look today.

*I received an ARC of the book for my honest review.