Guest post by Lauren Kessler
At Wordstock 2010, Lauren Kessler reads from her book, My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey through the Thicket of Adolescence, on Sunday, October 10 at 2pm on the Columbia Sportswear Stage; she also appears at 4pm on the McMenamins Stage for the Brave New World panel discussion.
In my new book, My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey through the Thicket of Adolescence, I took on that challenge by embedding myself in my about-to-be-teen daughter’s life. It was an 18-month immersion experience (and, I probably need not add, a wild, wild ride) that took me from middle school classrooms to the mall, from practice fields to summer camp to online chat groups as I observed, chronicled—and sometimes participated in—the vibrant and scary world of a 21st-century teen. I wanted (I needed) to understand who my changeling daughter was as she moved from (as a People magazine review put it) “sweetheart to snark-mouth.”