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87 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must-Read for Tweens/Teens and Their Parents, May 25, 2004
This review is from: Mean Chicks, Cliques, And Dirty Tricks: A Real Girl's Guide to Getting Through the Day with Smarts and Style (Paperback)
"Please don't let anyone get in your way!" So starts Erika V. Shearin Karres' book MEAN CHICKS, CLIQUES, AND DIRTY TRICKS. This is some of the best advice you will find, but doesn't even compare to the rest of the advice that Ms. Karres gives throughout this book. Part of being a girl is getting used to the "in" crowd, snobs, bullies, teasing, cliques, gossip, backstabbing, and more, whether during school hours, or on your own time. It is the one thing that makes being a female extremely tough, and easily compares girls to wild animals fighting over the tiniest thing. Split up into 10 Chapters, MEAN CHICKS breaks female predators down into various groups, and writes about each separately. Chapters on The Bully, The Snob, The Gossip, The Traitor, The Teaser, and so on, feature quotes from young girls who have been bullied in the past (this feature alone will have tweens and teens interested in this book, as they feel as if they are being spoken to by their peers, as opposed to a parent/teacher/guardian), stories about girls who have overcome bullies, quizzes, resources, and an all around survival guide to help tweens, teens, and their parents deal with the problem civilly. As someone who has been bullied non-stop in the past, I found this book to be extremely empowering, yet uplifting at the same time. I even starting crying a few times when reading the true stories from girls who have been bullied, as I could relate to them so well. Ms. Karres' breakdown of each type of girl is entirely accurate, and will have readers nodding their head in agreement with her comments about The Bully, Traitor, and so on. Parents with a tween/teen girl who is being bullied should definitely purchase this book, as it will be a helpful guide for both YOU and your child. Don't miss MEAN CHICKS, as it is a necessity. Erika Sorocco
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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing!!, January 17, 2005
This review is from: Mean Chicks, Cliques, And Dirty Tricks: A Real Girl's Guide to Getting Through the Day with Smarts and Style (Paperback)
This book was awesome!! It put everything that happens at school into perspective for other people. I even did a book report for English on this book. So I decided to include part of it in this review, on this book in which I highly recommend:
One of her most inspiring books is Mean Chicks, Cliques, and Dirty Tricks. In this book, Dr. Erika explains how cruel young women are to each other. Her audience is mainly geared for middle or high school girls. She describes the stereotypes of most "mean chicks" of every school and ways to handle their behavior. She also uses several forms of sarcasm such as when she is mentioning how to deal with a "teaser." After someone has been teasing you, Dr. Erika's advises you to "record on paper what's being said, word for word, and by whom, when, and where. When someone asks `What're you doing?' you reply, `I'm documenting what's going on. Just in case this ends up in court. My dad says, `You always have to have the facts first.'" Her sense of humor continues as she writes about stereotyping people in which "Labels are for soup cans and sunscreens, not for people." Dr. Erika also includes references from other fields such as science. She labels different cliques as "alpha," "beta," and "gamma." Her friendly tone creates a more personal relationship between the reader and the author. The novel is full of motivating quotes and stories made by young girls who are spreading kindness to our society. Dr. Erika also includes fun filled quizzes so readers can find where they stand with the "mean chicks" and how to make situations better.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for opening a conversation, some good advice, but... barely deeper than a "very special episode" of your favorite sitcom, June 23, 2008
This review is from: Mean Chicks, Cliques, And Dirty Tricks: A Real Girl's Guide to Getting Through the Day with Smarts and Style (Paperback)
I have a daughter on the cusp of middle school, when the girls are just starting to get into the familiar patterns of female-to-female relational aggression so common at that stage. I ordered this book figuring perhaps it would be a good resource for her for dealing with some of these issues. I have read several books for adults that deal with these issues ("Reviving Ophelia," "Odd Girl Out," "Queen Bees and Wannabes" and such), but they tend to lack practical advice for the girls in the midst of these things.
This book is geared, instead, toward the girl facing this world on a daily basis. Overall, I think it's a decent resource, with a description of the behaviors a girl is likely to encounter, advice for how to deal with them, quizzes, examples of how other girl dealt with things...
There were, though, some things that keep me from giving this book a better rating. I think the suggestions were pretty simplistic, and while not as bad as simply saying "ignore them and eventually they'll leave them alone," they didn't really go into the REAL consequences of taking some of the recommended stands from the book. The author makes it sound as if once a girl rattles off a speech from the book, the "mean chicks" will leave her alone... which isn't quite the reality most of us have encountered. I'm not saying any of it is bad advice, I just think it paints a rosy picture of how quickly and easily these things work.
Another thing that bothered me was how much time was spent on excusing the offending girls' behaviors. The gossip should be embraced for her exceptional story telling skills, the bully should be pitied because she's probably being bullied at home, and so on. These may be true in some cases, but it's such a simple after school special way of looking at the world - get to the root of this other girl's issue and she'll suddenly be miss congeniality. Everything seems neatly wrapped up in a bow far too frequently in the book.
(The other annoyance was the pop culture references and attempts at slang which rapidly date an otherwise still contemporary book. It's hard enough for adult editors at magazines to keep up with this without sounding ridiculous to teens and adults... the shelf life of a book makes it all the more pronounced.)
All in all, I would recommend this as a conversation starter and to give some guidance to a girl who occasionally encounters rough behavior, but if you have - or are - a child who is truly bullied on a day-to-day basis, don't expect a life changing experience.
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