Life Lists for Teens

Life Lists for Teens

Pamela Espeland

2003 * p. 244 * YA Nonfiction

Life Lists for Teens contains numerous lists, suggestions, tips, etc that help teens in 9 different areas: Health & Wellness, Getting Along, Staying Safe, School & Learning, Going Online, Planning Ahead, Saving the World, Focus on You, & Just for Fun.

The book can be read from cover to cover or by just perusing through it. That is the beauty of this book. Readers can pick and choose the topics that they need help with. I didn't spend much time on sections and lists about teen pregnancy and smoking, but I did spend time on perfectionism and procrastination.

The lists are also great because they address different areas of a problem. For example, there is a list of reasons why you shouldn't get a tattoo. But then following it is a list of what to be careful of if you can't be persuaded not to, etc. The book promotes healthy and moral decisions but doesn't preach.

-Reading level: ages 10 & up: teens can go to this book with many different issues and question.

-Appropriateness: it does talk about sex, drugs, tattoos, sexual harassment--but only in the manner of how to combat it, stand up for yourself, and seek help.

-Author talks well to the teen reader and relates with subtle humor.

Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850

Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850

Susan Campbell Bartoletti

2001 * p. 172 * YA Nonfiction

Black Potatoes gives a history of the potatoe famine in Ireland. I learned much. One of the phrases that struck me was that it was a "man-made famine." It wasn't that there was no food, but rather that people didn't have any money to buy food.

Bartoletti explains many circumstances around the famine: the tension between England and Ireland, between Protestants and Catholics, between Landlords and laborers.

There are many quotes and experiences that are included by Famine survivors and relatives, most of them heartbreaking. For instance, an account of a woman that begged for money to buy a coffin for her dead infant. It is truly a humbling book. I will never look at a bag of potatoes the same again.

So many politics, and political mistakes by England, escalated the famine. An airborne, foreign fungus rotted the potatoes literally overnight. Since harvesting potatoes is what farmers survived on, most were left desitute. Everyone, mostly the laborers, were starving. When they tried to eat corn that England imported for them after months of starvation, the kernels ruptured their sensitive intestines and killed many of them. Landlords evicted residents from their homes. People ate whatever they could find: rats, cats, dogs. Disease spread. And much, much more. Truly, horrible.

The book is informative without feeling like a textbook. There are many illustrations included, most of them sketches from newspapers that reported on the famine.

-Reading level: grade 9 & up

-Big words are explained and have pronunciations

-Many illustrations

-Some disturbing details and stories

-A good segue into talking about the Irish Famine or as a supplementary text