The Other America - Teen Dropouts - Hardcover

Stewart, Gail

9781560063995: The Other America - Teen Dropouts

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1560063998 ISBN 13: 9781560063995

Publisher: Lucent Books, 1998

Young people who drop out of school have limited opportunities. Teenagers discuss their dreams, their hopes, and the direction their lives have taken since leaving school.

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From Booklist:

Stewart must have interviewed countless teens to end up with these four diverse subjects. As she does in other books in The Other America series, Stewart briefly explains that her purpose in writing them is to give a voice to society's outsiders. By wisely allowing the voices of the four teens to be heard without interruption or bias, she achieves her goal admirably. The stories are starkly different and unusual. One teen is a self-conscious young mother who kept her pregnancy a secret until giving birth. The other female teen, who has survived separate incidents of being kidnapped and raped, is a recovering drug abuser who astounds us with her candid explanations of how easily she manipulated her family, friends, and teachers to stay high. The two male subjects tell straightforward, unapologetic tales that are truly heart-tugging: one, a former gang leader, is haunted by his elderly father's disowning him; the other suffered unfathomable tauntings at a new school that his parents thought would give his life more structure. In each case, disarming candor from the narrator achieves exactly what Stewart is after: she opens eyes and creates a connection between these teens and readers of any age, and from any life experience. List of pertinent organizations; further reading. Roger Leslie

From School Library Journal:

Grade 7 Up-Four first-person accounts by teens who dropped out of high school reveal the complicated stories behind this often misunderstood and marginalized portion of adolescent society. The introduction includes facts and statistics useful for reports, and further reading and resources available to high school dropouts are appended. The teens' stories are moving, sad, and realistic. Readers may feel both sympathy and scorn for the reasons they give for quitting school (gang life, pregnancy, not fitting in, addiction recovery), and may pause to think more about the reality of being a dropout. The epilogue also reflects the difficult task of getting back in school. Stewart's narrative is appropriate and nonjudgmental; she does an excellent job of letting the teen voices shine through. Average-quality, black-and-white photos put faces to the stories.
Katie O'Dell Madison, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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