Customer Reviews

The Teenage Book of Manners...Please!

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is great. I used it to teach a manners course for 7th and 8th graders along with their Bible class. I will use it again this semester and hope to have the book available for each student next year. The students loved the book. I used my own
transparencies to teach from the book. They had fun and always wanted to know on Thursday or Friday if we would start with manners. Those 2 days were manners days. The book was interesting to them and I used my own thoughts and teaching approach to reach the students. They practiced what they learned from introductions,telephone manners, table, dating, car, classroom and probably the most fun and importance to them was the emphasis I put into Personal Manners and Personal Values.
I had two hairdressers come in to talk about personal care. Two students were picked by a drawing for a makeover. Also, another student went to a very formal dinner and told his mother he knew from "manners class" exactly what to do with the utensils on the table. Fred Hartley is to be commended for writing such a humorous approach to manners for teens. It absolutely fit exactly what I was looking for when I found it. It is also based on Scripture which makes it all the more important to me and to reach students that I teach.

I found this book in my brother's room and out of pure boredom decided to read some of it. I must say that this is not the kind of book most teenagers would actually pick up, buy, and read. This is the kind of book you must force your kid to read. Some of the things in it were Brady Bunch goody goody, and others just plain obvious or unstoppable (A.E. "Things to avoid while someone is talking" yawning or falling asleep...personally I think if you fall asleep when someone is talking it means that person is extremely boring or you are narcoleptic). I was not interested enough to finish the whole book, and the illustrations bothered me. I do not feel like Fred Hartley connected with me as the reader either. I give this book three stars, because some of the things in it might be worth reading. I would suggest you borrow it from the library though.

Fred Hartley writes in his introduction to the Teenage book of Manners that he would like to provide a simplistic approach to manners, a skill in which many teens are lacking. He does just that as he, along with help from his entire family, compiles various areas of etiquette, from basic introductions to eating to dating, into a short easy-to-read book. The book, which is slightly over 200 pages, is filled with humorous illustrations, and in less than two hours, can provide any teen with the foundation to become the next Mrs. (or Mr.) Manners. While the book ddoes not cover every subject in depth, it does try to touch on many different categories. Hartley writes the book using his family as examples and the constant use of "we" begins to wear thin the reader's nerves. A major downside of the book is it is written as if the reader was raised in an incredibly strong Christian based family with strict morals and values. Innumerable references to God and conducting your life around a certain faith's beliefs detracts immensly if the reader is not familiar with that faith. Overall, if the reader moves past the many colloquialisms and religious refrences, the guide offers a stron base for teenage etiquette.

Sometime we assume kids pick up the basic's from watching and our examples. But with kids one can't assume anything. ALSO, often kids today would take someones word for something that's been published in print, rather than their own parents.. Just because you can't ASSUME anything with kids, for your benefit and their own it's a good idea to make sure they get some education on the BASICS of good manners. The book is one all of my children read at my house. It probably won't win a pulitzer prize but if they read it - at least you can be assured they KNOW the basics and if they embarrass themselves it's not your fault.