Fast Forward

By Mary Jane Miller

Book Overview

Teenage pregnancy has attracted the attention of sociologists, psychologists, social workers, teachers, politicians, taxpayers, and parents. But in the midst of gathering statistics and designing programs, few people have stopped long enough to pay close attention to the young people themselvesto try to understand who they are and what they feel about their lives. In this book, Daniel B. Frank has drawn a series of sensitive and revealing portraits of adolescents confronted with the fact of parenthood. For two years Frank worked as a tutor at Our Place, a Family Focus center for black teenagers in Evanston, Illinois, listening to them talk about their lives, their feelings, and their private dreams. The power of this volume lies in the voices of these young people describing the pleasures as well as the shocks and bruises of thier new role. Hope, disillusion, fortitude, loneliness: these themes occur and recur as each story unfolds. Readers will be drawn into the lives of these teenagers and will emerge with fresh insight and understanding about teenage parenthood. theirtheir

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670843393
• ISBN13: 9780670843398
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.8"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Junior high's even harder without your best friend...

Eleven-year-old Kayla Redmond is nervous enough about starting junior high. Then she finds out her lifelong best friend and neighbor Margy is moving. Even though she and Margy still get to visit with one another every few months, it's just not the same...especially when Margy starts talking about her new friend Noelle constantly. Meanwhile, Kayla's grades are plummeting, and she just doesn't know how to tell her parents she's dangerously close to failing science...and why. Despite covering ground familiar to YA novels, Miller does a good job in creating fresh, memorable characters and humorous/sensitive situations.

A book that expresses the true meaning of friendship!

Kayla Redmond has been best friends with Margy McKenna since third grade. When Margy moves downtown to Chicago, Kayla is heartbroken. When Kayla finds out that Margy has a new best friend, Noelle, she gets mad. When Kayla is invited by Margy to a sleepover party with Noelle, she realizes that she is no longer Margy's best friend. Kayla even wishes that she could fast forward past all the other bad parts of her life. She was also having trouble with a science project, so she copied off one of Margy's old science reports! When she finally gets the guts to tell Margy exactly how she feels about Noelle, things aren't so weird anymore. Kayla feels as if she should take her finger off the fast forward button, because she realizes that her friendship with Margy is an example of a true friendship!