Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul I

October 1, 1997
Gr. 7^-12. With high-interest teenage subjects running the gamut from love, family ties, and self-esteem to developing values and life crises, such as a death in the family, this collection certainly reflects the Sturm und Drang of the age group for which it is intended. What's more, teenagers not only helped select the poems, stories, and accounts that have been included but also have written some of them--about a third of the contributors are high-school age. A number of the rest are adults' recollections about life's lessons learned, with a few contributions by well-known people, including Sandra Cisneros, Helen Keller, and Robert Fulghum. But what really makes this collection different from books of this kind is that the plainspoken, sometimes awkward selections make a positive whole. This isn't a religious book, but it is an inspirational and motivational one, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, that teens will read because it proves that there is, indeed, some light at the proverbial end of the tunnel, something increasingly difficult to discern in YA literature and usually not apparent on the evening news. ((Reviewed October 1, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)