The Gifted Teen Survival Guide

January 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-This book provides gentle, straightforward, and realistic advice to teens who find that their giftedness is not always simple. A section on intensities outlines the ways in which gifted young people may display sensitivity or excitability that sets them apart from their peers. The authors carefully explain a variety of likely intensities, along with strategies for turning them into positive experiences rather than frustrations. The guide is full of reasonable, thoroughly explained tips on topics like tests, taking control, managing time, interacting with teachers, making friends, considering college, sexuality, and depression. The tone indicates quite clearly that the authors have a deep understanding of gifted minds and gifted children. The book is filled with sidebars, lists ("Top 10 Bizarre College Essay Questions"), quizzes, and survey results. Gifted young people everywhere should have access this book, and the adults who work with them will gain a better understanding of them from it.-Nora G. Murphy, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, La Canada-Flintridge, CA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2011

While gifted teens may seem to be best prepared of all adolescents to cope with life, this effort offers specific, often pithy advice for a sometimes-neglected group's special needs.

Many school systems now make some effort to identify students who are gifted, while not fully agreeing on what that term means. Beginning with a close look at how giftedness is identified, the authors move on to cover in detail how to deal with parents, friends and teachers, twice exceptionality (for example, Asperger's syndrome and giftedness together), how to make schools better serve unique talents, how to choose and prepare for college, how to deal with relationships and, finally, good advice on a variety of topics relevant for most teens: sexuality, depression and "existential crises." Sections of advice are interrupted by smart, sometimes funny essays by a variety of gifted people talking about their teen years. This is an updated, fourth edition of a work that was first published in 1983; it feels fresh and timely, with information about current topics such as online education and the distractions of and dependence on electronic media. A detailed table of contents will make it easier for readers to identify especially pertinent sections, if they don't want to read through the entire work.

An intelligent, entertaining look at the unique and not-so-unique issues that gifted teens face. (Self-help. 11 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011
Grades 8-11 Rewritten and updated but preserving the overall structure and approach of the 1996 edition, this frank appraisal of the challenges and rewards of being smarter than your average bear continues to provide effective self-confidence-building advice on a broad array of personal, social, and life issues deemed significant by the respondents to a recent survey. Addressing teen readers directly (while expressing a hope that parents and educators will find it worthwhile reading), the authors cover changing definitions and views of giftedness, the brain's physical development, varieties of intelligence, preparing for college and a career, keeping school relevant, and forming and nurturing relationships with peers and adults. Along with self-analytical mini-quizzes, dozens of testimonials from gifted teens, gifted former teens, and experts are interspersed, and a healthy set of annotated resources caps the presentation. Much of the advice and information here is generic enough for any teen self-help guide, but discussions of intensity, of being 2E (meaning twice exceptional, or gifted and saddled with a physical or learning difference), and other specialized topics add a distinctive slant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)