Book Review: Honey for a Teen's Heart by Gladys Hunt and Barbara Hampton

Synopsis

Honey for a Teen’s Heart consists of ten chapters addressing the whys and hows of developing a love of literature into an integral part of family life, followed by book lists with annotations which include title, author, date of publication, brief synopsis of plot, and recommendations including appropriate ages and suggestions of the issues that may be addressed by or arise from the reading.

Reviewer’s Comments

I found the first ten chapters affirming and encouraging. The annotations of the books with which I am familiar were concise and accurate and, I felt, largely on target. Of course, there were some books included which I would not have my children read, and a few which I regard highly were omitted.

While the inclusion of a book in the lists clearly indicates the authors’ feeling that it is worthy of our time and attention, the recommendations seemed, to me, to be carefully neutral. I would have liked more specific information about how much violence, racism, crude language, sexual innuendo, etc. occur in a book, and how these issues are presented and resolved.

Recommendations

This is a valuable resource for the home in which reading is (or is wished to become) an important family activity. However, I would not encourage a parent to give a child a book with which the parent is not familiar simply on the merit of its being included in these reading lists.