Saturday, July 2, 2011

Odd Girl Out


When it was first published, Odd Girl Out awakened us to a hidden, hot-button subject: bullying among girls. It elevated our consciousness and helped millions of girls, parents, counselors, and teachers deal with a devastating problem. Now bullying expert Rachel Simmons updates her groundbreaking work for the newest generation of girls.

Rooted in her extensive experience with girls since Odd Girl Out first appeared, as well as up-to-date research, Simmons offers a new chapter on technology: she focuses on cyberbullying and what parents and teachers can do to deal with the problem, and how girls can avoid drama online.After working directly with schools and families over the past decade, she also brings us new classroom initiatives and step-by-step suggestions for parents. With illuminating, timely additions, this definitive resource is now even more relevant, still shining a powerful spotlight on the most pressing social issues facing our girls.

My Thoughts: Having three daughters this book intrigued me. Odd Girl Out was a relatively easy read; it was not laden with boring statistics and research data but instead most of the book were anecdotes of the author's interviews with girls and woman around the country. The difficulty with this book is I'm not sure of its intended audience: educators, parents, girls? It seemed to have a little for each group; I think it would have been better to have a smaller book devoted to a more specific audience.  I was very glad to see the chapters entitled: bff 2.0 cyberbullying and cyberdrama as well as raising girls in a digital age (Yes, the titles were done with standard capitalization.) as I think that is a real issue in today's society.

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy of Odd Girl Out available via NetGalley.

PS: All I could think about while reading was Taylor Swift singing Mean.

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