Getting kids to understand brain science is a thankless task that many educators have struggled with over the years. TALKING ABOUT ADOLESCENCE is part of that cohort, a series written by author Dr. Eichin Chang-Lim that attempts to walk adolescents through the puberty years and beyond by relating their experiences to the science happening underneath. Supercharge Your Body and Brain Power is Book 2 of this series, focusing on how the brain works and develops throughout life.
It is a mixed success. Written with absolute beginners in mind, the book has to spend a lot of tedious time laying the foundation of brain science. The information here is on par with what you would expect from a high school biology class, just targeted toward the specific goal of guiding teens to understanding the complexities of their brains. While at times it makes illuminating connections between brain chemistry and adolescent behavior, it also tends to devolve into bullet-point lists of scientific facts. Meaning that while the best audience for the book would be teens going through the changes in question, they are also the group most likely to struggle remaining interested in the more technical aspects of the presentation.
The book does mitigate this problem somewhat by structuring the content into easy-to-follow sections. The regular format is to introduce science concepts around the brain and the body, then discuss how that science affects things like mood and behavior. Chapters are broken into distinct headings so that the pace of each section is fast and easy to refer back to when needed. To its credit, an emphasis on charts and graphics breaking up the text makes the more technical information a bit easier to follow. Each chapter starts by posing questions for the reader to think about while reading and ends with additional questions for them to continue considering. Some sections even include links to videos produced by the popular Crash Course YouTube channel to help illustrate a concept.
Chunks of the book are written with overarching analogies that help to explain a concept throughout a chapter. For instance, Minecraft, the video game in which players build their own worlds from scratch, is used as an extended metaphor for how the “world” of the brain is built: “In the Minecraft scenario, the capital city symbolizes your frontal lobe […] the goal is to provide all the resources for building an effective, powerful Capitol with the most advanced technologies and communication gear for the best benefit of the citizens in this metropolis.” These parts of the book help to explain complex ideas in ways that teens should be able to understand.
Overall, TALKING ABOUT ADOLESCENCE: Supercharge Your Body and Brain Power may not change lives, but it would serve as a good supplement to other material. If a teen is learning about the brain in school and then reads this book after school, they would certainly develop a stronger understanding of the material—and particularly how it relates to their body.
Eichin Chang-Lim’s TALKING ABOUT ADOLESCENCE: Supercharge Your Body and Brain Power packages brain science in a way that teens can follow, even if it doesn’t always hit the mark. An informative, solid beginners guide to understanding the changing adolescent brain.
~Alex Strine for IndieReader