Jill Zimmerman Rutledge

In this self-help book for teenage girls, psychotherapist Jill Zimmerman tackles 10 "girl emergencies": body image, panic attacks, depression, boys, divorce, bullies, substance abuse, insomnia, homosexuality, and over-scheduling. Some chapters are better than others. Each chapter includes at least three stories from teenage girls and how they dealt with those problems. Some chapters are better than others. For instance, the chapter on depression fails to take into account clinical depression, and the chapter on boys turns sex into a trivial decision that any young girl can decide to do as long as it makes her happy at the moment. However, her advice on dealing with other issues, such as body image and insomnia, is spot on. Overall, readers should take her advice with a large grain of salt. Sometimes her language comes across as corny - for instance, she compares solutions to Dorothy's clicking her heels in Oz, and she uses the fifties song "Mr. Sandman" as the title for her chapter on insomnia. She also makes allusions to current pop culture icons such as Lady Gaga, but they feel stilted and unnatural.… (mehr)