An inclusive look at puberty for tweens and young teens of all gender identities.
An LGBTQ+-friendly guide to all things related to puberty.
Written by a nonbinary sexual health educator and social worker, this book is divided into four parts, covering an introduction to puberty, changes to your body, self-care tips, and how to connect with yourself and others. Within each section, readers find activities to further their learning and interaction with the content, including writing and discussion prompts and suggested activities. Carnagey intentionally presents the information using gender-inclusive language, for example speaking of “people who were assigned female at birth or who have ovaries.” The book covers topics such as gender, sex assigned at birth, being intersex, going through puberty as a nonbinary individual, period care for trans and nonbinary people, and sexual orientation. The care with which these topics are handled creates a safe space for tweens to explore their identities. Other sensitive topics discussed are period poverty, masturbation, and the importance of consent and boundaries. The backmatter includes suggestions for further reading, websites and organizations, and resources for adults. Although the work specifically addresses a young adolescent audience, many adults will find value in it. The author presents the information clearly, concisely, and nonjudgmentally and reminds readers that there’s no room for shame in discussing these topics. Gilmartin’s bright illustrations show people of varied abilities, skin tones, and sizes and include clear anatomical drawings.
An inclusive look at puberty for tweens and young teens of all gender identities. (glossary, references, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781683694311
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest.
A quick history of hacking, from the “phone phreaks” of the 1960s to today’s attacks on commercial data stores large and small.
Drawing solely from previously published reports and documents, the authors paint an alarming picture (“The internet has become a cyber criminal playground”) as they trace the growth of increasingly sophisticated digital attacks on personal, corporate and government data systems. Though they rightly point out that many hackers, from early “phreaks” like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on, have been motivated more by the pleasures of creating software or high-tech gear (or, as they acknowledge in the case of Edward Snowden, idealism) than criminal intent, most of the incidents they describe involve theft or espionage. Noting that attacks can come from anywhere in the world and that malware can be secretly installed not just on computers, but on any number of gadgets, the authors project little hope of keeping our information safe from bad guys. Nor do they offer more than, at best, bare mention of firewalls, encryption, two-step verification, strong passwords and other protective countermeasures. Still, readers will at least come away more aware of the range of hazards, from phishing and ransomware to botnets and distributed denial of service, as well as the huge, rapidly increasing amounts of money and data shadowy entities are raking in.
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest. (source notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-2512-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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