Drugs and Anger

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-These series entries have little to offer. Drugs and Music chronicles oft-reported tales about famous musicians who were drug abusers without shedding any light on the matter. Words such as convulsions and freebased are not defined in spite of the text's simplistic tone. The only material not found in other books on the subject deals with explicit lyrics in popular music celebrating drug use, but the discussion is too brief and superficial. Drugs and Anger is primarily about attitudes, feelings, and psychology and dramatizes ideas through trite scenarios. The author's preachy tone detracts from the book's possible impact. Its main focus is hard to pinpoint and the connection between drug use and extreme emotions is not clearly shown. Some of the same information appears in M. Walker Buckalew's Drugs and Stress (Rosen, 1993). Drug abuse prevention is a hot and significant topic, but no purpose is served by adding these titles to the plethora of available writings.-Renee Steinberg, Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ