Doing It

Rating:
Summary: Superior Book--Genre Busting...
Review: An incredible look at teen life. Amazingly honest and frank. This is how it is. It is not like the babysitters club! The English setting is universal. This is being made into an ABC series--should be interesting. Still, read this book. Your age does not matter.

Rating:
Summary: Richies Picks: DOING IT
Review: Last year many of us got to read the highly publicized and highly charged essay in The Guardian by British author Anne Fine about the new Melvin Burgess novel DOING IT. (If you haven't read the essay, Google "Guardian Anne Fine Doing It" and you'll find a link.) To put it mildly, Anne Fine was unable to find the appeal in DOING IT.

Reading Fine's attack, along with statements by other writers about Burgess's proported attempts to "push the envelope" by having the male, high school characters so candidly discussing issues of male sexuality, left me somewhat squeemish about the prospect of reading the book. I'd heard lots of "Wows," but not any "Really great story!"

DOING IT is, in fact, a really great story about three male high school friends and their obsessions about and relationships with females. It is well-written and compelling, fun and honest and occasionally heartwarming. Those three high school boys are a self conscious, vulnerable, and sensitive lot. And while I cannot necessarily see myself as any one of those three characters, I had friends in high school who were dead ringers.

To argue that normal high school boys don't spend a lot of time thinking about girls and girls' bodies would make my high school experience abnormal. (It could be argued that Richie's Picks began in the late 1960s when I kept a secret, hidden list, updated weekly, of the ten girls at school I'd most like to be with.) To argue that boys aren't fearful about their adequacy, that they don't worry about whether their bodies are normal, or that they don't say truly gross stuff on a regular basis is, of course, ridiculous. And to argue that boys won't go crazy over this book is something that even Ms. Fine didn't even have the...um...nerve to claim.

My point is this: DOING IT is a primo Growing Up Male book. High school and public YA librarians absolutely need to forget about Anne Fine's fears of DOING IT. Instead they need to read DOING IT and need to buy it for their collections whether or not it is their cup of T (as in testosterone).

I'm recommending this book for all high school and public library YA collections.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Did IT
Review: What can I say? Basically this book captures the teenage mind at it's best......and worst for matter!I has everythin' a teenage boy and possibly some girls want from a book. It's all about hormones and well SEX and is a must read for teenagers and young adult readers!