Yep being a teenager can be pretty damn hard but with a handbook that good sitting next to you, it’s not half so bad.

Being a teenager in 2015 is not exactly a super sleek, bump free ride, as we all know.  So, when I saw that there is a talk which claims that it will help you to “navigate your way through” the testing times, how could I miss it?  On hand to deliver their pearls of wisdom were authors James Dawson and Hayley Long, each bringing their different books and genders to the table, combining their understanding and humour.  The result? A hilarious but helpful and insightful talk.

Now, as a girl about to turn 16, I feel that I could do with a bit of help on answering some of life’s great mysteries.  Who better to do that than Hayley Long?  BEING A GIRL is her first nonfiction book and it covers everything that we girls have to go through from makeup to hormones; the tricky matter of school hierarchies and lots of other issues which tax the teenage girl’s brain.   Being a teenage boy however isn’t something which I can claim to know much about so I was interested to hear about life for the other 50% of the teenage population. Luckily, James knows a lot about it.  He is a former PHSE teacher, specialising in YA books, both fiction and non-fiction.  BEING A BOY, is his ultimate guide for boys on all things to do with relationships and all puberty stuff…

Both books cover serious, and at times scary topics in a very witty and light-hearted way and the discussion at the Guildhall did the same.

Later, the floor was opened up to us as we asked all our teenage niggles and deeper Q’s to the ‘box of secret truths’… and you know one answer that did emerge? Yep being a teenager can be pretty damn hard…. but with a handbook that good sitting next to you, it’s not half so bad.

Written by Meg Allen

15 Years