Usborne Facts of Life, Growing Up (All about Adolescence, body changes and sex)

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I think, in the West—I’ve been living in America for three and a half years—I think boyhood is changing here of course. Boys tend to develop an almost violent perception of the self while growing up, but the Millennials’ outlook on life is different. The society of today is much more aware of violence and the repercussions of these things, and is much more vocal about it. There is, like never before, awareness about feminism and women’s rights, for example, and what it means to be respectful of one another. Some of those concerns were not there a hundred years ago, and they aren’t even there today in most parts of Africa. So I think in that sense, in the moral sense, there’s a difference in boyhood today in the West. Accuracy: This is a nonfiction memoir that is as much a narrative as it is a historical slice of American life. The author is a well-known journalist, and he describes his plights while growing up with sincere details, not for sympathy but for posterity. It not only somehow idealizes a turbulent time period, but it also seeks to educate future generations. Let’s go on to the third book. Chike and the River by Chinua Achebe. Many of us know Things Fall Apart, but I don’t think as many of us know this, his first children’s story. What made you choose this book? Russel, having his heart broken from their breakup, unintentionally teaches his mother a lesson on the importance of happiness in a person’s life. Russel’s life is not always filled with blissful memories. He remembers when he ended up bursting in tears after hearing about his father’s death. There was also a time when Russel was struggling and was deeply depressed; not able to withstand the fact that his mother was going to get married with another man due to his unworldliness. There were times when he felt sympathy towards his mother, who sacrificed her allowances to buy Russel a beautifully striped green suit.

Let’s face it, coming of age books are timeless and there are so many different ways you can make a connection. Sometimes the main character is just so real, you can see your younger self in their personality. Other times it’s the experience; you’ve gone through this before, or you know someone who has, and it strikes a chord. It can be similarities in the family dynamic where maybe you realize that your particular assigned grown-ups have no idea what they’re doing. Most times it’s just the struggle™; growing up can be weird and awesome and stressful and terrifying on its own. So, attention adults adulting, and kids and teens adulting—you are not alone. You are right. In the case of Oliver Twist, I love the book mostly because of how he discovers himself—the discovery of inner strength, let’s say. He’s an orphan, he becomes used to suffering, being passed from hand to hand. There is a pivotal moment, when he is fourteen or so, and he’s taken to his orphanage, and the meal is so meagre that he’s eternally hungry. All he thinks about is food, “How can I get more food?” And then one day he had this radical idea, “How about I ask for more?” He has the idea that, if you want something, you can actually make a demand on life. That was what turned Oliver around, that is what makes him the interesting character he becomes: that discovery that he can make an enquiry into something. My family was much like the boys in The Fishermen, we were regarded as middle class. But our neighbours and the rest of the people I knew at the time struggled. Their idea of boyhood was much more focussed on the future, rather than the now: “When I grow up, I want to be this.” Even middle class people, like my father, kept saying, “You boys have to be better than me when you grow up, you must be this…” There’s always more of an upward look to the future there than you would have in America—where it seems like you don’t have any problems, you are enjoying the now and the future will come at its own time. ENGL 1.4 The student will read, comprehend, and analyze relationships among American literature, history, and culture. Scope: This book goes beyond what a student would learn about this time period in a history book. Not only will students be learning about a young man’s struggle to help his family survive during rough times, but they will also be learning about relationships, family, and the value of life.Disgruntled…follows Kenya from West Philadelphia to the suburbs, from public school to private, from childhood through adolescence, as she grows increasingly disgruntled by her inability to find any place or thing or person that feels like home.” Brooklyn byColm Tóibín You are from Nigeria, but started writing the book in Cyprus. Was going away important to get that distance, to be able to return to that time of your life?

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peaceis a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.” The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Let’s move on to your final book, Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy. Tell us about this collection of short stories. Some books are popular titles you may recognize from your own childhood, while many will be titles you have yet to discover. We're confident these will soon become cherished favorites. Nanette O’Hare has played the quintessential privileged star athlete and straight-A student for as long as she can remember. But when a beloved teacher gives her his worn copy of The Bubblegum Reaper—a mysterious, out-of-print cult classic—the rebel within Nanette awakens.” Juliet Takes A Breath by Gabby RiveraI was expecting a lot of humour and there is some (for instance in his portraits of his uncles and in his relation of his own unsuccessful attempts at seduction) but also a good deal that is sad and moving, though unsentimental and clear-eyed. I started thinking about the family in terms of any entity or organisation. Suppose you have a group that is united by one strand. It could be the idea of shared ancestry, or nationhood, or family. What is it that can come in and destroy that bond? What can come from the outside, but cause the disunity to begin from within? I was reading a book at the time that said a civilisation cannot be destroyed from the outside, it has to come from within: there has to be some internal collaboration for you to be able to destroy an institution. So I decided I was going to try to tell this story of the breakdown of this family by an outside encroachment. That formed the political layer of the story. Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous—it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.” Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.Russell Baker begins his memoir with a child's eye-view of a blissful life in the rural mountains (?) of Virginia with his mother, father, an abundance of Baker uncles and a much-loved grandmother . In later childhood and in adolescence he experienced the Great Depression in Newark NJ and Baltimore, mostly while living amongst some equally interesting maternal uncles. He speaks of the three strong women who influenced him - strength being not always an entirely positive attribute... I believe that for a work of fiction to really succeed, it has to be based on a philosophy, or a couple of them. There has to be something about the deeper, subterranean knowledge of human life that the novel will explore. So what I wanted to do with The Fishermen was explore the idea that we can understand human beings through other creatures. I can tell you a story of a family, through the prism of how animals relate to each other, or from the bodies of other creatures.

The book is also intensely melancholy, in a way that I think might have put me off at other moments in my own journey but thankfully didn't as I read. Authority: Russell Baker is an award winning journalist and published author. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, one of which is for this book. In this novel, he wrote first-hand about day-to-day events he experienced. Appropriateness: According to Scholastic, the reading grade level equivalent is an 8.6 and the interest level is 9-12. Written as a memoir, students would be reading about a man his/her own age growing up but just in just a different time. A collection that needed more nonfiction or biographies would need a book like this. Students who have an interest in journalism or writing could use this book. As students prepare for career research, this would be a good addition.The thing with the novel that I found surprising was how complex it became when it was done. I set out to do just two or three things with the book, but it became very multi-layered. On the primary level, it’s a family drama. I wanted to write about what it means to grow up, to have to rely on your older brothers for wisdom and outlook on life. But then, once I began, I discovered that I was passionate about other things.