Still looking for that perfect read over summer vacation? There’s still time to add another book to your summer reading list. Below are some of the books Keys School faculty and staff have been reading over the past year. Many of the choices on our list offer a unique perspective on adolescent behavior and parenting in the twenty-first century. We hope this diverse range of suggestions is both engaging and enlightening!
Happy reading!
Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michelle Borba
Bestselling author Michele Borba offers a 9-step program to help parents cultivate empathy in children, from birth to young adulthood—and explains why developing a healthy sense of empathy is a key predictor of which kids will thrive and succeed in the future.
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood by Lisa Damour
Lisa Damour, Ph.D., director of the internationally renowned Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls, pulls back the curtain on the teenage years and shows why your daughter’s erratic and confusing behavior is actually healthy, necessary, and natural.
Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrenhaft
A groundbreaking guide to caring for children who live outside binary gender boxes.
Thank you for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration by Thomas Friedman
In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts.
How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Over-Parenting Trap by Julie Lythcott-Haines
A provocative manifesto that exposes the harms of helicopter parenting and sets forth an alternate philosophy for raising preteens and teens to self-sufficient young adulthood
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain by Dan Siegel
In this New York Times–bestselling book, Dr. Daniel Siegel shows parents how to turn one of the most challenging developmental periods in their children’s lives into one of the most rewarding.
Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele
Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity.
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.
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