Our Last Best Shot, by Laura Sessions Stepp, is the first book I read that was so true to fact concerning the pre-adolescent and early teen years. She demystifies this age group and shares what they are really all about. Stepp reaches beyond appearance and myths concerning teens and separates the wheat from the chaff.

A whole year was spent actually living with these teens, investigating their true selves. Stepp goes to school and church with them. She hangs out at the mall and the school dance. They confide in her and so do the sometimes-baffled parents of these kids. She watched as parents struggled to do the best for their children, each in their own individual way. Their struggles, failures, and successes are well noted. This research took her to the heights and depths of emotion and clearly aroused sensitivity to youth and their problems.

Sometimes strictly observer, sometimes advocate, occasionally mentor, and always friend, this author got inside the skin of these kids to understand them better. She brought with her to this book project a willingness to learn a questioning mind, and an acceptance of kids for who they are. This book could not have been written any other way.

This author, a former Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter for the Washington Post, has done a fabulous job both on reporting what she saw and evaluating it. The amount of material she must have accumulated in her research must have been incredible, but she chose just right when she put this book together. This will become one of those books that everyone describes as a 'must read' when speaking of younger adolescents.

Credits: Jo Ann Wentzel