Rating: 
Summary: Important issues for daughters and parents...
Review: While I believe the issues in the book are very real and need to be addressed, I have some concerns with the book as well. They are as follows.....1. The "Check Your Baggage" sections presented in this book challenge parents to recognize their own biases. While this can be good, it should be noted that some of that baggage also contains wisdom gleaned from experiences and from deep-seated convictions. As a result, there are certain non-negotiables, which should be adhered to with tenacity. As a result, it would be foolish for parents to check all of their beliefs at the door. Maybe a better approach would be for the author to have given some guidelines regarding which baggage to check and which to keep. 2. I appreciated the fact that Wiseman offered scripts for discussing difficult issues and advice on how to deal with them. Now, this is real, it is practical, and it takes the theoretical and shows how to apply it to life-settings. 3. Regarding homosexuality, author presents the question to parents of "What do you think caused your heterosexuality?". She wants parents to view heterosexuality as another, equally valid, moral choice -- along side of heterosexuality. Wiseman's pro-lesbian agenda comes through in this section. She plainly believes these vastly different sexual lifestyles are conditioned by culture and experiences, but believes that neither is more normative or fulfilling than the other. However, for the parents who believe homosexuality is outside of one's intended design, the question of 'what caused your heterosexuality is equivalent to 'what caused you to choose that which you were designed to do?' What I mean is, the question does not supercede the bottom line moral question.
4. So many of the issues dealt with in the book from gossip, to sex, to drugs, to drinking are all either moral issues or related to ethical conduct. The author provides no real direction for what can be determined as right and what should be determined as wrong. She makes judgments on behavior, but without a clear source or an apparent means of differentiating the two. 5. In conclusion...regarding the social minefields of female adolescence and the deep scarring that can result; I would suggest 'Odd Girl Out' over this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Practical
Review: While it is virtually impossible to pigeonhole most girls into one role or another, and their roles are constantly changing, the first half of this resource proves very helpful for those of us wanting insight into "Girl World."
As a woman who fits the description of "adult ally" rather than parent, I found many tidbits I could apply to my mentoring relationships with middle- and high-school girls, and an equal number of clues to the behaviors of my associates (and myself) when I was growing up.
However, this book slips into tolerance overdrive, especially in the interest of gay tendencies. ("Tolerance" is our culture's excuse to overlook our lazy inability to separate attitudes about persons from approval of their behavior. It is precisely because of this kind of tolerance that slaveholders were enabled for so long in this country.)
I wish the author had kept her perspective more objective. Her treatment of heterosexuality and homosexuality as equally moral and valid may make some readers doubt her common sense in other sections of the book as well.
Read the first half attentively; the second with a huge grain of salt.
Rating: 
Summary: Just Plain Insulting...and Short-sighted
Review: Wiseman makes far too many assumptions and lumps people into the same categories far too often in her book. Naturally, not everyone can be neatly put into a category, since teenage girls are not created with cookie cutters. In turn, we all cannot be dealt with in the same way. Some of the advice that she gives is quite inadequate, and it doesn't really make sense. After all, if all teenage girls are supposed to nicely fit into categories, how can we all be dealt with in the same way? What works with/for one young woman will not work with/for another, and I do not feel that Wiseman stresses this. I think that overgeneralizing is really taking away from Wiseman's book on the whole...not to mention the fact that she gives misinformation to her readers.
As a teenager, I'm really bothered by the fact that Wiseman addressed the "nice in private, mean in public" treatment that she says that girls often initiate but neglects to mention the more popular form of punishment--the "nice in public, mean in private" treatment! This is something that I know has not only happened to me, and I know that it definitely exists. It is actually the reason for which I purchased this book, thinking that it would be discussed! Blatant meanness is not the only thing that exists ACROSS the genders. If Wiseman neglected to mention this but balloons other matters, can her words be regarded with any merit?
A particularly disturbing segment in this book is one in which Wiseman attempts to describe Black culture to people who do not know much about it. In her description, she is extremely condescending and acts as if she is playing a trivia game.
"[Did you know that] those beautiful long braids [B]lack women wear are made from hair extensions, cost hundreds of dollars, take up to ten hours to complete, and are braided so tight that women often get terrible headaches?" she says in a direct quote from this book. She goes on with more "groundbreaking trivia," but I will spare you from it.
Besides the fact that this is NOT always true (NOT all Black women with braids wear extensions--as a Black woman who wore braids in her youth, I have never ONCE worn extensions! Moreover, NOT all braiding takes ten hours to complete and cost hundreds of dollars!) I was extremely offended at how Wiseman discussed the culture of Black hair, and how she trivializes it, gives MISINFORMATION about it, and is completely condescending about it in the process. Likewise, I am sure that I am not, nor will be, the only Black woman (or woman of any race) to be offended by this segment.
Wiseman only writes 5 pages on Black women--would it be so much to ask for her to make sure that her information is accurate? If you want to read a book that makes gross overgeneralizations about teenage girls, tries to tell parents how to deal with their supposedly cookie-cutter young women, AND gives misinformation on Black culture (and it is highly probable that since her segment on Black women is only 5 pages long but has plenty of misinformation in it, there's misinformation elsewhere as well!) then buy Wiseman's book--but in my opinion, it is better left on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: OK, but could have been better
Review: Wiseman seems to focus more on her experiences with adolescent girls rather than offering solid advice for parents. An interesting read, but as a father, I'm afraid I didn't get much out of it.
Rating:
Summary: A snappy title, but not much else
Review: With my 12 year old now in middle school, I was anxious to read this book. It had such a cute and snappy title, and I was sure it would be chalk full of good info. Almost right away I was disappointed. At the beginning of the book the author happily tells us how her infant son thinks the automated swing in her home is his "mother", because he has spent so much time there while she was trying to finish her book. This turned me off in a big way---am I going to take parenting advice from a woman who gleefully babbles about neglecting her own baby? I think not. Also in the early chapters Wiseman talks about all of the pitfalls that a teenage girl faces but concludes (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book in front of me), "but not to worry, because one day your daughter will become a totally cool adult." Totally cool? Like THAT is what I'm hoping for my daughter? What about independent, productive, self-supporting, kind, giving back to the community, moral, strong values, etc., etc. No, the goal evidently--according to Wiseman-- is for them to be "cool." At about this point I had had almost enough and just skimmed through a few more chapters which I didn't find especially interesting. I can't tell you how glad I was that I had taken this book out of the library and not actually spent money on it.
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