Kid Confidential

Montgomery, Monte. Kid Confidential: An Insider's Guide to Grown-Ups.

Illustrated by Patricia Storms.

"What is a Grown-Up? Loosely defined, a grown-up is anyone who (a.) is a lot older than you, (b.) has stopped growing taller(but may still be growing wider), (c.) reads newspapers, and (d.)thinks the music you listen to is garbage." (page 6)

Keeping this theme in mind, this handbook discusses grown-ups at home and at school, how to stand, understand, and how to manipulate them. It covers why adults are insecure about their appearance, vocabulary that they use, and how to communicate with them.

Strengths: Part self-help book, part satirical description, this was a fairly humorous book with some good hints; the chapter on librarians ("Librarians: The best friend you'll ever have who'll tell you to shut up", page 99) is fairly flattering and spot on ("All librarians are crazy, but they're crazy in the coolest way possible: they're crazy about books." ).

Weaknesses: I'm not sure exactly what this IS. Dewey 818. American Miscellaneous Writings. This is one I'm just not sure about-- may have to wave at children and see if they would pick up a copy if I had it in my library.


Nonfiction Monday was started by Ana Suen and is hosted this week at Apple with Many Seeds.