What to Do When and Why: At School, at Parties, at Home, in Your Growing World [Hardcover]

Marjabelle Young Stewart (Author), Ann Buchwald (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up

Advises the pre-teen girl on manners, beauty care, being a likeable person, and generally dealing with life's situations.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Robert B Luce (November 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0883311054
• ISBN-13: 978-0883311059
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,440,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great nostalgic read with still pertinent advice, May 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: What to Do When and Why: At School, at Parties, at Home, in Your Growing World (Hardcover)

While it's true that some portions of this book are a bit dated now, it is still full of good etiquette advice. I found this book when I was 11 years old, and have treasured my copy all these years. Without a mother to show me "what to do when and why" I found this to be my growing up textbook. It peaked my interest in self-care. I even started washing my hair! (ha ha) The gorgeous line illustrations alone make it worth having.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Savoir-faire Everywhere, May 25, 2002

By 

Riche Richardson (Ithaca, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What to Do When and Why: At School, at Parties, at Home, in Your Growing World (Hardcover)

This book was distributed in the first set of poise-charm classes that I took at Gayfers department store in Montgomery, Alabama at age 11. Through weekly drills, we covered topics such as walking on a runway, making regular poise-pivot turns and Dutch boys, climbing stairs, doing introductions, maintaining good posture, and sitting properly, among others. In the end, we had a fashion show at the mall, and membership in the Jr. Gayfer Girl Club was extended to us, along with seasonal store discounts at 10%. This was the summer of 1983 when "Calvins" still meant almost everything and many girls in my class said that Tom Selleck was their favorite actor; it was before anyone had ever heard of a concept such as the "supermodel." By this I mean that few if any of us in the class had an idea of who Gia Carangi was or what she represented at the time. As I recall, Stewart's book covers numerous questions: How to set a table? How to make introductions? What to do when you lose your best friend or boyfriend- the kinds of relationships that are at best "iffy" from the start? (And this is where I first learned that word, along with a few others, for overall, Stewart addresses her young audience with the grace of Miss Manners and does not condescend to it by watering down her language). How to handle it when you are the target of gossip? She offers a party lexicon, consisting of varieties such as the "come as you are party." She addresses the importance of sending a "bread and butter" note after visiting someone. There are even, I think, a few recipes. And there's a section for filling in your family tree inside the front cover. We never engaged this book directly in our course, but this was reading that I complemented by poring over illustrated sections on "social graces" in one of the old and very thick dictionaries in our house, which seemed to cover just about everything. I was disappointed that in a later charm course I took at age 14, the official book was one from Seventeen magazine and more focused on makeup instead of the development of social skills along the lines of Stewart's book. I even read and referred to her book many times throughout my early teen years. I finally passed my much loved copy on to the preteen little sister of my boyfriend when I was 17, for I was tutoring her in math at the time. In retrospect, this is a book that part of me wishes I'd held on to as a keepsake, for only hindsight has allowed me to understand fully the difference that it helped to make in my social, emotional and personal development and maturation. In general, exposure to a text with that kind of orientation at an early age also introduced me to and gave me a deep love and appreciation for the "how to" genre, and to this day, as an adult working as a university professor and moonlighting as an artist, I regularly mix "how to" books into the range of selections that I read. This book may have also put me on the road to cultivating a love for books in the self-help genre, though I don't always have a lot of time to read these kinds of selections. The world has changed a lot since this book's first publication date, and with all the complex issues youth often face in and beyond school settings these days, it may well come across to some as dated and old-fashioned. But I think that there is a timeless quality about it that would make it work for any time.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What to Do When - And Why, April 8, 2001

By 

Jessica Stroud (Eastern Shore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What to Do When & Why (Hardcover)

This book is a bit old fashioned. The etiquette in the book isn't really practiced anymore. However, there's interesting and useful facts inside. i.e. french food phrases, handwriting analysis, how to write a business letter, telephone manners, posture .. etc.