Not Much Just Chillin' : The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers

by Linda Perlstein

• ISBN13: 9780374208820
• ISBN10: 0374208824
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-09-04
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A report from the front lines of the most formative-and least understood-years of children's lives Suddenly they go from striving for A's to barely passing, or obsessing for hours over "boyfriends" they've barely spoken to. Former chatterboxes answer in monosyllables; free-thinkers mimic their peers' clothes, not to mention their opinions. Bodies and psyches morph under the most radical changes since infancy. On the surface, they're "just chillin'." Underneath, they're a stew of anxiety and ardor, conformity and rebellion. They are kids in the middle school years, the age every adult remembers well enough to dread. No one understands them, not parents, not teachers, least of all themselves-no one, that is, until Linda Perlstein spent a year immersed in the lives of suburban Maryland middle-schoolers and emerged with this pathbreaking account. The book traverses the school year, following five representative kids-and including the stories of many more-as they study, party, IM each other, and simply explain what they think and feel. As Perlstein writes about what she saw and heard, she explains what's really going on under the don't-touch-me facade of these critically formative years, in which kids grapple with schoolwork, puberty, romance, identity, and new kinds of relationships with their parents and peers. Not Much Just Chillin' offers a trail map to the baffling no-man's-land between child and teen, the time when children don't want to grow up, and so badly do.

Author Biography

Linda Perlstein is an education reporter for The Washington Post.

Table of Contents

Prologue: at least they can't shove me in	p. 3
I can't believe the day's almost over	p. 11
Everyone else thinks it's a stupid plane crash	p. 25
Any girl will obsess over at least 1 guy in their life	p. 39
Stop! don't touch! get Out!	p. 50
I'm scary enough as it is	p. 59
There's always next quarter	p. 69
It's not you it's me	p. 82
I can't make her do anything	p. 95
I barely ever have a chance to make fun of anyone	p. 105
But what does this actually have to do with real life?	p. 113
Purple, is that close enough?	p. 128
I don't care about the snack pass	p. 135
Not much just chillin'	p. 145
It's the jackie show!	p. 151
I'm not that curious anyone	p. 161
I love yo more than words can say	p. 173
Sometimes I wanna say stuff, but I don't wanna say stuff	p. 177
Another survivor of the woods	p. 189
She started humping me! and I was like :-O	p. 201
Now you have the persentage of your love	p. 210
She's lost to us	p. 218
This is the most I ever typed in one day!	p. 223
Why do people always take sex as a play thing?	p. 232
There's nothing to be scared of in middle school	p. 240
Epilogue: You get good at something and then you move on	p. 246
Notes	p. 251
Selected bibliography	p. 257
Acknowledgments	p. 261
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.