Journal Buddies: A Girl's Journal
For Sharing and Celebrating Magnificence
By Jill Schoenberg Girma
Blue Sky at Night Publishing
Juvenile Nonfiction-Social Situations
- Self-esteem & Self-reliance
Perfect Bound Paperback
Sept. 12, 2005
$12.95
ISBN: 0-9768623-1-X
156 pages
Jill Schoenberg Girma has come up with a way to get teen girls to share their thoughts with their friends. The main goal of her interactive journal is to "Focus On and Magnify the positive characteristics that you like about yourself and others."
It's set up like this...
You have a month's worth of journal entries, which focuses on the following: a thought for the day offering advice, qualities and traits. You and your friend have to write about the other's talents.
Each day there is a word to think about, to write about and explore. The blank pages after each entry are the diary portion where you write about your thoughts and feelings.
The next three pages explain how you and your friends are supposed to fill in the entries. To help get you started, there is a page where you can write your friends or family members' names who you would like to participate in the journal. The journal focuses on girls who are more willing to express their thoughts and feelings in a diary.
My opinion... teenagers simply do not express themselves as often as they should. Their emotions are buried and then come out in anger or frustration. I see the journal doing two things: it allows you to see the positive characteristics that you like about yourself and others and it allows you to get through a difficult day. The journal will only be effective if you and your buddies make a commitment and follow through for the thirty days. I would recommend the journal for girls who are in 6th-9th grade.
One thought: the author focuses on the positive aspects of your personality. What happens if something negative shows up in the entries because you never know what your friends are going to write about you. Or what if they share something with you, that their parents need to know about. Kind of a cry for help.
--4 journals out of 5
Lauren Fleischer, gottawritenetwork.com
11/20/05
