Review DEAR TEEN ME by E. Kristin Anderson & Miranda Kenneally @ZestBooks

Book Description

Release Date: October 30, 2012

Dear Teen Me includes advice from over 70 YA authors (including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, and Nancy Holder, to name a few) to their teenage selves. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends--and a lot of familiar faces--in the course of Dear Teen Me.

About the Author

Miranda Kenneally is the author of Catching Jordan (fall 2011), Stealing Parker (fall 2012), and Bad, Bad Thing (spring 2013). She is the co-creator of the blog Dear Teen Me. Miranda is represented by Sara Megibow at Nelson Literary Agency.
E. Kristin Anderson is the co-creater of the blog Dear Teen Me. Her poetry has been published worldwide in literary journals. She is also an assistant editor at Hunger Mountain for their YA and Children's section. Look out for Ms. Anderson's work in the forthcoming anthology Coin Opera II, a collection of poems about video games from Sidekick Books.

SOURCE:  AMAZON VINE

MY THOUGHTS

LOVED IT

This book is a collection letters written by popular young adult authors to themselves as teens to tell them that essentially, life does get better.  Well, in some cases, it does get way worse than better, but eventually, things do look up.  There are all kinds of confessions involved here, some of my favorite authors have dealt with illness, abuse and more adversaries that make my life look like a fairy tale. Most have been threatened by bullies, a lot have had family members die, suffer from drug abuse or even worse. 

I had no idea that these authors had to deal with these situations while growing up.  It is amazing that some survived at all and a lot of them have incorporated their experiences into their work.  It is truly eye opening.  Some of my favorites were from Carrie Jones where she explains that a horrible encounter with a boy ended with her having epilepsy.  The letter from Ilsa Bick was heart rendering as she talks about her father who was the only survivor of a Nazi death camp. There are also a few lighthearted moments where authors name their celebrity crushes.  I wish I would have found the tumblr site for this book before it was released.  I am going to send it to every teen I know. 

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Zest Books; Original edition (October 30, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1936976218
• ISBN-13: 978-1936976218