Feature - My Teenage Werewolf

What’s more challenging in the life of a woman: being a teenager … or being the mother of a teenager?

Just yesterday she was our sweet-tempered, smiling little girl. She thought Mommy was a saint and a genius, beautiful, beneficent, and all-knowing. Now Mom is an enemy, a barrier—or at the very least the font of all things embarrassing and uncool. And the erstwhile Miss Sweet Pea is … a werewolf? Who is this new headstrong, mercurial, mascara-wand-waving girl?

In My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence (Viking; ISBN 978-0-670-02169-7; 256 pages), award-winning author Lauren Kessler embeds herself in her about-to-be teenage daughter’s life and shares her story with the eye of a reporter, the curiosity of an anthropologist and the open—sometimes wounded—heart of a mother.

The road every mother of an about-to-be or full-fledged teen travels is both well trod and mysterious. There is no relationship quite as primal, as vitally important, or as deeply conflicted as the one between mother and daughter. And there is no time quite as challenging in that relationship as when the daughter passes from child to teen. It is on the precipice of this transformation that best-selling journalist Lauren Kessler embarks on a journey to understand and strengthen her suddenly rocky relationship with her own 12-year-old daughter, Lizzie.

Kessler launches on an 18-month mission, traipsing from seventh and eighth grade classrooms, to the mall, to summer camp, where she observes, chronicles—and sometimes participates in—the life of a 21st-century teen. With the tools of her trade, she transforms herself from mom to immersion journalist to explore and chronicle the vibrant, dynamic and scary culture in which Lizzie is coming of age.

Funny, harrowing, poignant and invariably candid and insightful, My Teenage Werewolf is both a canary in the coal mine for mothers of girls and a vibrant exploration of the single most important relationship in a woman’s life.

About the Author - Lauren Kessler is the author of six narrative nonfiction books including Dancing with Rose. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine; the Los Angeles Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; and the Nation. She directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. Lauren’s website where she and her daughter Lizzie co-blog : http://www.myteenagewerewolf.com/

Disclosure - This product was received for review consideration. The synopsis/description was taken from Amazon or the back of the book.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to my feed!