School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-This book provides gentle, straightforward, and realistic advice to teens who find that their giftedness is not always simple. A section on intensities outlines the ways in which gifted young people may display sensitivity or excitability that sets them apart from their peers. The authors carefully explain a variety of likely intensities, along with strategies for turning them into positive experiences rather than frustrations. The guide is full of reasonable, thoroughly explained tips on topics like tests, taking control, managing time, interacting with teachers, making friends, considering college, sexuality, and depression. The tone indicates quite clearly that the authors have a deep understanding of gifted minds and gifted children. The book is filled with sidebars, lists ("Top 10 Bizarre College Essay Questions"), quizzes, and survey results. Gifted young people everywhere should have access this book, and the adults who work with them will gain a better understanding of them from it.-Nora G. Murphy, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, La Canada-Flintridge, CA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
(Self-help. 11 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Rewritten and updated but preserving the overall structure and approach of the 1996 edition, this frank appraisal of the challenges and rewards of being smarter than your average bear continues to provide effective self-confidence-building advice on a broad array of personal, social, and life issues deemed significant by the respondents to a recent survey. Addressing teen readers directly (while expressing a hope that parents and educators will find it worthwhile reading), the authors cover changing definitions and views of giftedness, the brain's physical development, varieties of intelligence, preparing for college and a career, keeping school relevant, and forming and nurturing relationships with peers and adults. Along with self-analytical mini-quizzes, dozens of testimonials from gifted teens, gifted former teens, and experts are interspersed, and a healthy set of annotated resources caps the presentation. Much of the advice and information here is generic enough for any teen self-help guide, but discussions of intensity, of being 2E (meaning twice exceptional, or gifted and saddled with a physical or learning difference), and other specialized topics add a distinctive slant.--Peters, John Copyright 2010 Booklist
