teens

Adult / Guidebook / pre-teen / teens — No Comments
19
Jul 09

REVIEW: Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty

Bobbi Brown Teenage BeautyIf you’re shopping for a nice, thoughtful present for a pre-teen or teenage girl, check out “Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty” because it’s a *great* book for teenage girls.

“Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty: Everything You Need to Look Pretty, Natural, Sexy and Awesome” is a handy reference of about 200 pages with:

  • glossy pictures of teenage girls of all face shapes, hair colours, shapes and sizes,
  • a foreword by Brooke Shields (Calvin Klein supermodel) on being a teenager – she wasn’t as popular in high school as she was on the big screen,

    A great quote: “I wish I spent more time just being me. Now I get it: It’s okay to try to fit in as long as you don’t compromise who you are.”

    (It’s famously known that Brooke Shields doesn’t allow any make-up artist to trim down her trademark thick eyebrows)

  • 10 Basic Rules of Teen Beauty – great tips on basic skincare and make-up,
  • the perfect make-up kit,
  • individual sections on zits (pimples), eyes, blusher, lips, body types, prom beauty, braces, hair, preteen beauty and lots, lots more!

I was an “early teenager”, which means I got my period (and everything else) at 11 years old.

I didn’t have an acne problem but I did have a shiny T-zone (combination skin…) and the awful once-a-month giant pimple that pops up in the middle of my nose or forehead, which made me look and feel like a witch.

I had thick, wavy hair while almost everyone around me had thin, straight hair.

I was also short and plump.

In other words, life as a pre-teen and a teenager was a mix of good and bad…

Luckily, my Mum, who is a beautician, started me off on basic skincare and was also incredibly patient when I went on crazy crash diets and exercise regimes.

I also had many beauty books and piles and piles of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Women’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, Female, Her World magazines to flip through…

But I would have found “Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty” really useful because she talks about:

  • not feeling “pretty” and wanting to look like the supermodels in fashion magazines (e.g. wanting to have straight hair when you have wavy hair!),
  • glamming up for prom night…err, I think I overdid my eye make-up (experimented with the smudged look) and also went overboard a bit with the black theme all the guys called me ‘The Black Widow’,
  • African, Latin, Asian beauty and global (mixed-parentage) beauty – At around 20 or so, I realized that I had more of a ‘Latin’ look instead of an ‘Asian’ look. From then on, I focused on beauty, skincare and haircare products that’s best for me. Of course, I started getting “you’re kind of pretty, you know” comments then :-)
  • ‘So…You Want to be a Model’ – real world tips and advice from an ultra-experienced make-up artist (All teenage girls want to be taken seriously and will appreciate useful information),
  • runway secrets – the coolest tricks of the trade on how Bobbi Brown transforms models who have hangovers, late nights, bad hair days into the gorgeous girls on fashion shows.

The best part of the book is that Bobbi Brown brings out the best in you (boosting a girl’s confidence) instead of trying to make you look like someone else.

When you look at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos, you’ll see that she highlights each girl’s best feature and leave them looking naturally beautiful.

Even if the book was meant for teenagers, I think ANY girl or woman would benefit from reading this book. I’m definitely looking out for it…

Chapter book / teens — 6 Comments
15
Jul 09

REVIEW: Boy by Roald Dahl

boy-tales-of-childhood-by-roald-dahlI am now an official Roald Dahl fan! ‘Boy: Tales of Childhood’ is a sort of autobiography as the book covers the periodRoald Dahl was born in the South of Wales (his parents are Norwegian) and how his life changed when his father died, leaving his mother to care for 3 sisters, ‘an ancient half-sister’, a half-brother and him.

His summer holidays in Norway are really interesting and the incident involving the ‘ancient half-sister’s pompous boyfriend’ will make you laugh!

Dahl notes how impressed he was (I’m sure many mothers would be too today) at how his mother makes the travel and hotel arrangements in Norway for the huge family all the way from Wales. We REALLY shouldn’t complain about holiday planning now with the phone, internet and email…

Poor Dahl suffers greatly when he’s enrolled at an English boarding school (which his mother insists on, in honour of his late father’s wish).

The boarding school you read about in ‘Boy: Tales of Childhood’ is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the wonderful, romantic scenes from Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories.

At school, Dahl and his friends get ‘paddled’ on the butt, neglected (a boy actually died from a cold) and even having his weekly letters home cunningly monitored (and of course, censored by the boys themselves) by the business-minded headmaster, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury!

This is one of the reasons Dahl is disillusioned by the idea of religion…how can someone who has been so cruel to kids become a head of a religious institution that preaches kindness and compassion???

Since his mother has no real idea of what goes on in school, she can only send weekly homemade goodies. Reading Dahl’s experiences will remind parents NOT to be too trusting of school authorities especially as those in administration tend to paint a brilliant, bright picture of what goes on in school…I know I’ll never send my children to boarding school (not that I can afford it anyway!)

Besides school stories, I was *truly horrified* when I read about his tonsillectomy without anaesthesia. People at that time really suffered without modern medicine. Definitely for readers aged 12 and above…

In case I’ve painted a bleak picture of ‘Boy: Tales of Childhood’, I’m sorry. The book has funny and fascinating segments (the trick played on the miserly Mrs. Pratchett, the sweet shop owner; his letters home; his travels to Africa when he worked with Shell…).

After all, if I’m now Dahl’s No. 1 fan, the book must be a good read, right? Absolutely – especialy for summer reading!!!

Rating: ★★★★☆

Adult / Chapter book / teens — 2 Comments
4
Jun 09

REVIEW: I Have Lived A Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson

i-have-lived-a-thousand-years-livia-bitton-jacksonAnyone who has read “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” must definitely read this memoir of a 13 year old Hungarian Jewish girl, Elli Friedmann, who survived the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz with her mother.

While “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” records the events of the Holocaust from a young adult’s perspective, she did it in hiding from an attic in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I’ve always felt a painful irony for Anne Frank because she died a little after World War 2 ended when they were free to leave the space they had confined themselves to.

Elli’s (or Livia’s) memoir begins in 1944 but the choronological list of events at the back of the book noted that her father’s business was ordered to close in 1938.

When the book begins, we read about Elli’s strained relationship with her mother, who somehow prefers her brunette and brown-eyed brother, Bubi. Elli is blonde and blue-eyed and yearns fro a more affectionate relationship with her mother.

When she complains to her mother about her getting “no hug and no words of endearment”, her mother responds:

“I don’t believe in cuddling,” Mommy explains with a smile. “Life is tough, and cuddling makes you soft. How will you face life’s difficulties if I keep cuddling you? You’re too sensitive as it is. If I would take you in my lap, you’d never want to get off…You’d become as soft as butter, unable to stand up to life’s challenges.”

Do you think this is true? My mother was never affectionate with us and she used to comment that the relationship between the mother and daughter of “Gilmore Girls” is pure fiction.

Pardon the stray thought…maybe Elli’s mother was right because she turned out to be a really plucky girl when she was:

  • forced to surrender her brand new Schwinn bicycle, a birthday present from her parents, to the German SS troops;
  • asked to strip naked in front of soldiers;
  • painfully shorn of her beautiful, golden locks;
  • starved of food and water for days;
  • tasked with caring for her mother who became partially paralyzed after an accident

    • Reading I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaust, I can imagine how difficult it must be for the Jews who suffered under Hitler’s administration to let this go. In the foreword and also throughout the book, Livia Bitton-Jackson doesn’t come across as bitter – reading about her experiences, I feel like I am watching a documentary.

    She also states clearly in the foreword that she wrote her book with the hope that:

    “…learning about past evils will help us to avoid them in the future. My hope is that learning what horrors can result from prejudice and intolerance, we can cultivate a commitment to fight prejudice and intolerance.

    …

    My stories are of gas chambers, shootings, electrified fences, torture, scorching sun, mental abuse and constant threat of death.

    But they are also stories of faith, hope, triumph and love. They are stories of perseverance, loyalty, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and of never giving up.

    My story is my message: Never give up.”

    Rating: ★★★★½

    I Have Lived A Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson
    Publisher: Simon Pulse (March 1, 1999)
    Paperback: 224 pages
    ISBN-10: 0689823959
    ISBN-13: 978-0689823954

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