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Summary: Jermila's Point Of View
Review: I am a college student at Macon College located in Macon Georgia. This book was required reading for my Intro. to Education class. Reviving Ophelia gives good insight into the complexities of adolescent girls. Being female and having traveled this road in earlier years, has helped me in understanding some of my own feelings. Although I was not as extreme as some of the girls mentioned in the book, I do feel a kinship to them. I have a seventeen year old daughter and twin girls aged twelve. They all will be reading this book. I give a thumb's up on this very good book.
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Summary: MIKE'S POINT OF VIEW
Review: I am a college student at Macon State College, majoring in education. Part of the requirement for a class entitled, "Education in a diverse Society", was to read a book from a given book list. Since my wife was reading, "Reviving Ophelia" and was pretty much taken by it, I decided to read it also. I too became completely absorbed in it. For me the book gave a closeness and understanding for my own daughters that I was not fully aware of not having before. My oldest daughter is seventeen years old and away in boarding school. After reading the book, I called her just to say I love her and that I am always here for her. My other two daughters are twelve years old. I will now have a better understanding of the adolescent experience of young girls as they enter upon this most difficult period. I wish that I had read this book a lot earlier. This is one book that I highly recommend.
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Summary: Commentary on "Reviving Ophelia"
Review: I am a college student and am currently enrolled in several education classes. Our class was able to choose from several different books and I recently finished the book "Reviving Ophelia." I believe that this book helps to open the public's eyes about the life of a teenage girl in our present society. I wish that my parents had read this book or one similar to it when I was going through my "adolescent years." I honestly believe that it would have helped to explain some of my moods and attitudes and would have definitely helped my parents to understand the pressure to "fit in" that I and most other young girls felt during my teenage years. Mary Pipher tackles situations that most parents never even know their daughters are experiencing; she attempts to explain girls distinct "moodiness," drug and alcohol use, and their reasoning for wanting to distance themselves from their parents and yet stay close to them as well. This book can help to enlighten today's adults about what life can be like for our teenage girls. Many girls may never experience many of the situations discussed in the book; however, this book can prepare adults for these situations and even help young women know that others have been there as well.
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Summary: I am a man with a daughter who confuses me
Review: ...and this book gave me valuable information that has helped me over the years since I've read it. No single book has all the answers. I found this to be a help in framing some questions. My daughter is smart, articulate and funny. She's an A student in a competitive system. She is all these things and more, and yet she has been challenged by this dreadful passage in her life. Pipher's book gave me some hypotheses to use as a basis for understanding and dealing with her pain. It was recommended to me by my wife. We still talk about this book, even as we read more and cope.
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Summary: Reviving Ophelia
Review: I am an education student who is attending Macon State College. I read this book as part of a class assignment. Here are my thoughts. As a whole I was not very impressed with this book. I found it hard to read especially since it is really not the type of book that I am used to reading. I also find it hard to believe that girls are losing their "true selves" during adolesence. I always thought they were trying to find their "true selves." I never felt that I lost my true self during adolesence. I did not encounter any huge hardships growing up so I could not relate to the girls in this book with their problems of durgs and teenage pregnancy etc. I do agree that something has gone wrong in society that has caused girls and boys to use behavior that is inappropriate. Or things that have caused them to want to experiment more with drugs, sex, etc. I just don't know that I agree that the problem stems from them losing their "true selves."
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Summary: Interesting, but only half of the story
Review: Because girls get pregnant, attempt suicide more often, and generally act out their stress more in sorrow than in anger, it is in the form of girls that this book finds the evidence that it is looking for. However, I believe that expressing the problem in gendered terms is a short-sighted and rather patronizing mistake (Albiet the same complaint could be expressed against books that claim to examine the plight of boys.) To put it bluntly, various isms (including sexism but also racism, classism, and especially ageism), social expectations, and the current school system conspire to make adolescence a confusing and toxic experience for nearly all teens, no matter which 'bits' they were born with. Girls AND boys are suffering from being forced into social straightjackets, from excessively strict and/or detached parents, from mixed sexual signals, rape and exploitation, and from cruelly undervaluing expectations in the classroom. These issues need to be addressed across the board and not turned into one more subject in which we pit boys against girls.
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Summary: Must read for all pre-teen-teen Mothers!
Review: Easy to see why this book made the NY Times Bestseller list! Informative and eye-opening accountings of todays young girls. If you have a pre-teen or teen daughter this is an absolute must read. What may seem unreal to parents is well researched and written in this title. Sadly so many young girls fall victim to anti-social behavior and as parents we may not see it. I was shocked as some of what I read and when I spoke with several young teen girls, they were not shocked at all. Many had friends who were depressed or had eating, alcohol or drug addictions. Many are coming from higher educational and higher economic backgrounds. Held my attention and was extremely informative. Also would make for educational reading for many young teen girls.
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Summary: An overwhelming outlook
Review: I am a college student, majoring in education, and I read Reviving Ophelia for a class. At first my expectations were negative,but this book enlighten me on many situations dealing with adolesant girls.I could sympathize with the negative situations the adolesants experienced, divorcing parents, abusive fathers and depression, but not truly empathize. I had a two parent very sheltered life.However, this book introduced me to negative situations that can have a positive or negative outcome. The book is great!
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Summary: Understanding Adolescent Girls
Review: I am a college student majoring in education and read this book for a class. Since I also have an adolescent daughter, I found this book to be very insightful. The author, through the use of case studies, gives understanding to the complexities of adolescence. She shares her methods for helping these girls in crisis deal with the world they live in. I would recommend this reading for educators teaching older elementary and middle school girls. I would also recommend this for the parents of adolescent girls. This book reveals how the culture in which girls are raised today greatly influences their attitudes, actions and self-esteem.After reading this book I have a greater understanding of the right of passage called adolescence.
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Summary: Excellent Resource for Understanding Issues Facing Girls
Review: Reviving Ophelia was an excellent resource for combining and analyzing issues that face adolescent girls in America today. She places particular emphasis on the negative effects of our culture and says that the best solution would involve the decrease of our girl-poisoning environment. She comments that girls face pressures to be someone who they are not and this causes loss of true self that is replaced with a false self. She boldy asserts that this is a new "problem with no name" following in the footsteps of Friedan who coined that phrase in the Feminine Mystique. Throughout the book she reviews issues such as drugs and alcohol, sex and violence, media, eating disorders, depression, and the like that all contribute to the loss of true selves. For each issue she presents, she also gives real life examples of girls in her thearapy sessions that have faced the same problems. Overall, Pipher does a great job of presenting these issues to the public, and in doing so the possiblity for help for adolescent girls is increased.
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