Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens

September 1, 2001
Gr 7 Up-A book that is written in clear, user-friendly prose. Each page presents a different idea designed to help teens recognize mourning as a natural process connected with loss, reassuring them that they should not be afraid of deep, sometimes uncontrollable emotions, and showing them how to release grief in healthy, positive ways. Several suggestions appear under each heading; many of them encourage readers to express their feelings in a journal. The book has a comfortable tone to it, without taking away from the very definite need to deal with grief. It seems to work with, rather than talk at teens as they tackle the problem/solution process. A good first step toward admitting the need for and getting help.-Kim Harris, Newman Riga Library, Churchville, NY

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2001
Gr. 6-12. When teenagers lose loved ones, they often feel confusion as well as heartache. Wolfelt, whose decades of experience in grief work with teens informs his ideas, offers 100 ways to facilitate grieving and come to terms with loss. Although the instinctual desire may be to push intense feelings away, Wolfelt encourages teens to attend the funeral, visit the gravesite, and even to seek out smells that call the loved one to mind. He also counsels teens to avoid "techno-escape," using television and the Web to keep from feeling the pain. For periodic perusal more than a straight read-through, this book offers practical and constructive tasks that will bring teens into contact with their feelings. A unique approach to an important subject, this will be a good companion to Earl Grollman's "Straight Talk about Death for "Teenagers (1993). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)