EDCI 597 Lisa Philbrick Middle Grades Philosophy, Organization and Climate Book Review Fall 2009

Not Much Just Chillin’: the hidden lives of middle schoolers by Linda Perlstein

Not Much Just Chillin’ basic book information……..  ISBN:  Subtitle: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers  Author: Perlstein, Linda  Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Location: New York  Copyright: 2003  Publication Date: September 2003  APPLIES TO MANY SUBJECT AREAS  Psychology  Child Development  Adolescent Psychology  Teenagers  Middle school students.  Parenting  Life Stages - School Age

Table of Contents prologue: at least they can't shove me in ………3 autumn:i can't believe the day's almost over ……….11 everyone else thinks it's a stupid plane crash ………25 any girl will obsess over at least 1 guy in their life ………39 stop! don't touch! get out! ………50 i'm scary enough as it is ………59 there's always next quarter ………69 it's not you it's me ………82 winter:i can't make her do anything ………95 i barely ever have a chance to make fun of anyone …… 105 but what does this actually have to do with real life? ……113 purple, is that close enough? ………128 i don't care about the snack pass ………135 not much just chillin' ……… 145

Table of Contents cont’d it's the jackie show! ………151 i'm not that curious anymore ………161 i love you more than words can say ………173 sometimes i wanna say stuff, but i don't wanna say stuff ………177 another survivor of the woods ……… 189 spring:she started humping me! and i was like :-O ……… 201 now you have the persentage of your love ………210 she's lost to us ………218 this is the most i ever typed in one day! ………223 why do people always take sex as a play thing? ………232 there's nothing to be scared of in middle school ………240 epilogue: you get good at something and then you move on ………246

Brief Summary of the book…. Although the title of the book may suggest that these middle school students are comfortable and “just chillin”, underneath their hard shells are a bunch of young adolescents in a stage of conformity and rebellion. Suddenly they go from striving for A's to barely passing, or obsessing for hours over "boyfriends" they've barely spoken to. Former chatterboxes now barely speak; former leaders now mimic their peers' clothes, actions and their opinions. Bodies are changing. Attitudes need adjusting. Friendships are faltering. School is on the back burner and just makes no sense. Everything is questioned.

More summary…… Linda Perlstein narrates the emotional rollercoaster rides of five "tweens" (Eric, Jackie, Elizabeth, Jimmy, and Lily) over one academic year in a suburban middle school in Maryland. She insightfully captures their dialogue, their mood swings, and their daily dramas (and, boy oh boy, is there a lot of that!). They study, party, IM each other, and simply explain what they really think and feel. As Perlstein writes about what she saw and heard over the course of a school year, she explains what's really going on inside the students during this critically formative time in their lives. Students deal with schoolwork, puberty, romance, identity, and new kinds of relationships with their parents and peers.

Is This Book For You?  Parents, Perlstein provides information about how middle- school children learn best and what you can do to help.  Middle school teachers, this book provides insight to what your students are going through inside and outside of school. This could be a guide to get to know your students better, learn how to “reach” them.  Teenagers, this book will prove to you that the thoughts that pop into your head, the things that you stress over, the problems that you are having with puberty, friends, school, parents, teachers and anything else – you are not alone. In fact, you wil see that you are quite normal!

Pros and Cons  I really liked this book as far as providing insight into the adolescent mind.  I found myself laughing out loud, empathizing with the characters and their situations, and at times I just couldn’t put the book down.  It’s informative and insightful, but it’s all real people and real situations. The story was created by Perlstein actually spending the year with these kids.  The only thing that I did not like about the book was that there were multiple characters throughout that would just pop into the story and leave again. They are never introduced or explained and then they are removed from the remainder of the book. It made things a little harder to follow (almost as if I was really following a teenagers drama in real life!).

What Have I Learned?  I learned a lot about what my students are going through beyond the surface of the day to day school life.  I feel as if I was able to get inside their minds and understand them on a different level.  I learned that their mature ways of thinking are WAY ahead of schedule compared to mine when I was growing up. I actually had to think to myself “did I even know about that when I was in middle school?”  I learned that, along with everything else in life, the middle school stage is not exception to the rule – “This too shall pass”.