Teen Pregnancy

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-These titles will be chosen for reports because they are slim and easy to read. However, Teen Pregnancy is not as focused or as effective in conveying its message as Janet Bode's Kids Still Having Kids (Watts, 1992), and the text is repetitive. Rozakis voices concern about lack of access to birth control for poor teens and supports school clinics and the distribution of contraceptives. Large print and numerous illustrations, including photos of condoms, are pluses. In Drugs, Salak puts our current crisis in historical context. The all-too-familiar byproducts of drug abuse are described: family upheaval, crime, addicted infants, gangs, costs to employers, and transmission of AIDS. Profiles of individuals such as Noriega, former D.C. Mayor Marion Berry, and Pablo Escobar are included, as are some statistical graphs and charts. Salak concludes that little progress has been made. This title is current, clear, and well organized. The author neither lectures nor uses scare techniques in addressing the problem. Numerous full-color illustrations have good ethnic and gender representation. This book does not replace Margaret Hyde's Drug Wars and Know About Drugs (both Walker, 1990) or Gilda and Melvin Berger's Drug Abuse A-Z (Enslow, 1990). Nor does it have the scope of several volumes in the ``Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs'' series (Chelsea), which are more comprehensive, but geared to more sophisticated readers.-Libby K. White, Schenectady County Public Library, NY