Dr. Susan's Girls-Only Weight Loss Guide: The Easy, Fun Way to Look and Feel Good!
Grade 6 Up-Issues concerning weight are not easy to discuss with teens, yet Bartell has managed to do just that. In addition to working with experts in the fields of nutrition, exercise, and eating disorders, she met with teens who scrutinized the content and shared their experiences. Twelve chapters cover topics such as taking control, genetics, eating disorders, and exercise. While the tone is upbeat, the message is serious: -¦dieting is not healthy and neither is constantly being critical of your body. You don't need to make exercise a priority over everything else in your life, and your self-worth should not be decided by the scale or the mirror. Frequent quizzes allow readers to rate themselves in such categories as self-control, body type, self-love, and food attitude. (There is a reminder before each one not to write in a library book.) Notwithstanding the pre-pubescent graphics-including hearts, stars, curlicues, and polka dots-the weakest section is on exercise, where stamp-sized line art and extensive text make following the routines tedious. This virtual support-system-in-a-book provides listings for Web sites, cookbooks, and contact information for related organizations. Frequent boxed insets, subheads, and chapter divisions allow readers to browse among the topics, so the book is effective without being read from cover to cover. Still, teens may end up doing just that as they experience a discussion that speaks to them with honesty and authenticity.-Janet S. Thompson, Chicago Public LibraryCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.