It's a Girl Thing (Lola Love) by Lisa Clark
| It's a Girl Thing (Lola Love) by Lisa Clark | |
|
| |
| Category: Teens | |
| |
Reviewer: Zoe Morris
 | |
| Summary: The everything you wanted to know and more, warts and all guide to puberty from Lola Love and the gang. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 128 | Date: April 2008 |
| Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0007264902 | |
|
Share on: | |
|
| |
That fabulous chica Lola Love is back. Following the resounding success of her guide to life Think Pink she and the Pink Ladies have returned with a slightly more specific new tome on everything you need to know about being a girl, or in this case a pre-teen or teen girl on the verges of puberty. What does that mean? A range of chapters on everything from skin to bras to periods to hair removal (but not really boyfriends and certainly not sex), all presented with the appealing bright and bold Lola Love illustrations, and trademark inspiring Lola Love words of wisdom:
To be a girl is to be fabulous. Fact.
Lola Love is the girl next door. The big sister or best friend who has been through everything and can share the inside scoop with you. Someone who has useful facts at her freshly manicured fingertips (think the difference between deodorant and antiperspirant, or the importance of having your bra fitted properly). She is friendly and approachable and giddy, and has a habit of shining a good light on things. Only Lola can make you suddenly jealous of all the those people who have braces, after all.
That said, I'm torn between thinking that on the one hand this is the sort of level of information you might want to give to tweens, while on the other knowing from recent-ish experience that it's a bit of a naïve view of early teenage life. It says the sorts of things I read in magazines in the early 90s and subsequently realised to be untrue, and I suppose I assumed things might have moved on since then. I suppose I'm struggling to imagine the sort of girl who wouldn't already know most of this info, and more. It also stops quite soon after it starts - you might be a girl with all sorts of lady-bumps and changes going on, but you're still years and years away from even needing to think about boyfriends and boundaries and contraception kinda stuff - so may be quite limited in its age group appeal. It has some good tips in – how to make a homemade face mask or bubble bath concoction, for example – but I'm not sure some of the 'science' would stand up for itself (I thought we'd all established by now that shaving legs doesn't make hair grow back thicker, it just grows back with blunter ends?).
And, while the book tries hard to make everyone feel normal (if there is such a thing) and goes to great pains to explain why lots of boobs are different sizes, as just one example, it does slip up occasionally with the use of most girls… where I think many girls… could be more reassuring and less isolating.
It interested me to see how the author avoided a whole lot of slang throughout a book whose topics are rife with the stuff in real life. It's all proper words here though, so it's vagina instead of va-jay-jay and friends, testicles not balls, breasts or boobs not tits and a rather chaste hair between your legs to finish up with. That doesn't mean it comes across like a school text book, but it's not always quite as colloquial as the language a typical reader might use is.
I thought this book read like a teen magazine, which would probably be appealing to the sort of audience it's aiming for. Not only are the language and topics similar, it also comes complete with interactive quizzes and sections to reflect on and fill in. It was slightly cheesy and written-by-a-grown-up in places, but if your tween can cope with suggestions like Make your period day like any other by eat(ing) chocolate and strawberries she might well like this book, and if you'd rather issue a book than have to talk through some of the gory details yourself, this could be one of the better £5 you ever spend.
Parents can find out more about the series through the parents' page of the website which is also an interactive forum for fans of the Pink Ladies.
Thank you to the publishers for supplying this book.
If you're looking for a similar book to educate your son then you might like to try Unzipped: A Toolkit for Life by Matt Whyman.
Please share on: 
Facebook, 
Twitter and
Instagram
You can read more book reviews or buy It's a Girl Thing (Lola Love) by Lisa Clark at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy It's a Girl Thing (Lola Love) by Lisa Clark at Amazon.com.
Comments
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
Trudi Jones said:
HI I LOVE THIS BOOK ITS THE BEST AND IT REALLY HELPED ME UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS I WAS CLUE LESS BEFORE BUT WITH LOLA LOVE ITS HELPED ME!
