Get Your Copy The Geography Of Girlhood Written And Illustrated By Kirsten Kiwi Smith Distributed As Bound Copy

book had such an ease and flow, It was easy to read it in a day due to the free verse of the pages.

I actually do not think the title is stupid, the line toward the ending that says, "Isn't it strange the places on the

map, your heart can take you" All relating back to her mother, all relating back to her life.
That the geography of a girl is all over, they don't stay in the same wavelength as people, they think of love as if it could be more than once.
I truly believe it shouldn't be called love if it doesn't last, but Kirsten Smith portrays Penny as a girl of chaos and a girl trying to grow up, without a mother, without a real path to follow.
That she can love from afar from close, realise it wasn't mean't to be, that in life that happens sometimes.

i just really love how she explains things too, like at the end of how she is just floating in the middle of her life.
Even though it was a short read, it was a quick glance at maybe what we can say "girlhood" really is.

I'm not sure yet, since we all travel down different lives and have different impacts, but I sure did like this book.
Turns out The Geography of Girlhood was written by someone who knows a lot about teenage girls at least in the movies.
Kirsten Smith is the cowriter of some classic teen flicks including Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted and one of my alltime, nevergetsickofit faves Shes the Man.
I can not stress how much I love Shes the Man, Ive seen it many times and it still makes me laugh, I love that I can share it with my students when we study Twelfth Night.


When The Geography of Girlhood starts, Penny is just fourteen, Having rowed herself out into the middle of the bay to contemplate her life she thinks: “One day, Ill find my way away from here/ and go somewhere real/ and do something great/ and be someone wonderful.
”

Of course, the problem with being a teenage girl is that theres a whole lot of crap to wade through before you get that “someone wonderful.
” Fourteen, Penny intones, “is like rotten candy, ”

The novel, told in free verse form, follows Penny from the end of grade nine until just after her sixteenth birthday.


Penny is jealous of her perfect, older sister, Tara, her “long torso,/ the breasts lodged high/ like tea cakes/ on her powdery skin.
” She longs to experience “love” as she imagines it exists between Tara and Bobby, her sisters boyfriend.
“I look at her/ and memorize everything, / So when the time comes,/ and the boys eye glitters like a crime,/ I will know what to do.
” We learn about Pennys complicated feelings for the mother who left her, who, in fact “always wanted to leave wherever she was.
”

Readers will recognize themselves in Penny, While its true that fourteen was a LONG time ago for me, I can totally remember that feeling that ”you look good only once a week/ and its never on the day of the dance.
”

Penny navigates the treacherous geography of her girlhood, in language that is both poignant and pointed.
She falls in and out of love in the way of all teenaged girls, She makes stupid choices and does stupid things, but she is also smart and resilient and open to all the possibilities life has to offer.


“If anyone tells you that life is predictable,/ DO NOT BELIEVE THEM,” she remarks.


I really enjoyed this book,
THE GEOGRAPHY OF GIRLHOOD is a novelinverse that stares unflinchingly into the broken and confused life of a high school girl.
Pennys mother left her, her father, and her older sister Tara a long time ago, Tara is the cool older sister who hardly gives Penny the time of day, and Pennys two best friends are drifting apart, turning into people she hardly knows.


Thus, Penny must navigate the choppy waters of adolescence by herself, Sometimes she gets things right, but most of the time shell make mistakes, Either way, however, her story is a real, believable, and heartbreaking one that any teenage girl will like to pick up.

Penny is leaving Junior High and heading into High School, . . very scary time in her life for her, but once she is involved in HS, she realizes that she did a lot of worrying for nothing.
Penny's life revolves around thoughts of love, popularity and whether she is going to be accepted by others.
Penny's mother left when she was very young and now in her life is a Stepmother and a stepbrother.
Penny is always comparing herself to her older sister, Tara who is basically the "bad girl" of the family.
Good story quick read written in verse.
.This was an interesting book written in prose, It was short and sweet and to the point, It's amazing how Smith knew exactly how a teenage girl thinks, She really channeled thar thought process with the main character Penny, Penny is a stereotypical teenage girl who believes that she knows everything there is to know about making the right decisions.
Smith shows readers through the important time period in Penny's life where she learns how to be a teenager.
How to take things one step at a time and enjoy the experience, The Geography of Girlhood was a book that felt real and emotional, The Geography of Girlhood is simply about a girl growing up, becoming a young adult, without certain "guides".
At a young age, Penny's mother left her and her family, leaving her, her sister and her father behind.
Just like most sister relationships, Penny secretly looks up to her older sister while the two bicker and fight all the time.
Penny struggles with all the little and large aspects in growing up as she starts high school.


Kirsten Smith's use of FreeVerse offers a new point of view and way of relating to a teenage girl coming of age.
Her clever use of geography images and symbolizes defines the truth that most girls and women are not as clearly defined as one may think.
Just like Geography and Nature, a girl's emotions, thoughts, and adventures are anything but simple and normal.


While there were a few times when it was unclear what Kirsten Smith was trying to say, through her use of over done symbols and imagery, one message beyond "geography" rang true in this Verse Novel: Mother.
As Penny maps out her life without the guide a key so to speak of a mother she learns that does not need to be reliant on such a key and finds her own way to create her own individualistic "map".


Overall, The Geography of Girlhood was a nice quick read that the entire female gender can relate to in one way or another whether that be the many "loves" we go through, the "it's the end of the world" attitude about things, and even the realizations that come with growing up.
For me the use of symbolisms was a bit overdone, It did get confusing at times for example, how exactly did Penny's best friend become crazy and why Certain aspects such as this would have contributed to making the novel better if more detail was given.
But again, poetry and verse are not always apparent and push us to read between the lines.
In the end, Smith's novel was a very nice read and recommended for everyone, The "Geography of Girlhood" is the story of Penny, a girl we follow in verse from agesto about.
Penny has a wild older sister, a dysfunctional and missing mother, and a father who is trying to cope with it all on his own.
Penny's father eventually marries a marine biologist and brings a new vegan wife and stepbrother into his white bread/red meat world.
In the end Penny grows a bit and discovers her stepbrother isn't so bad her life is her life and she needs to accept it.


There are several problems with this novel: first, its the voice, I really didnt feel Penny spoke for contemporary teens, It felt as if Kirsten Smith drew on the angst of her own teen years which I suspect would have been thes, same as mine.
Theres just something off or dated about the book, Secondly, the characters names and the fashion described within the book again seem outdated Penny, Denise, Bobbywearing polka dots to a dance! Finally, the characters all had the flavor of go no where trash.
I simply had no sympathy for them at all,

I didnt identify with this novel, I think you had to have had a stormy girlhood or a dramatic nature to get most of this.
There are many maps of life to follow, This was nothing like mine
A "novel in verse, " The author Kirsten Smith has been printed in some top journals like Gettysburg , She was also the cowriter of some top movies: Legally Blonde,Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted, and She's the Man.


I think teenage girls will like the book a lot, i normally dont like poetry but this was so easy to read and so true! Books that are in verse format are not my thing.
I admit before reading The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith, I had never read a book written in this format before and it threw me off completely.
The Geography of Girlhood has a main character by the name of Penny, She talks about the different stages of a girls life, She talks about her family, particularly her sister who she isnt sure she likes, two guys that she dated, and the infatuation that is tied to teenage romance.
An obvious conflict in the novel is how messy and chaotic a teenage girls mind can be no matter the age.
All teenagers can relate to that on some level, and I remember as a teenager not really feeling comfortable talking about issues either.
It makes me smile to know at least that hasnt changed much, As for the audience, I believe this is targeted toward teenage girls between thirteen to sixteen because that is the time where nothing makes much sense.
It seems like one part of life might be figured out, but then something small in this case Id blame Bobby, the sisters exboyfriend can blow it all up and youre left picking up the pieces and trying to make them fit again.
The teenage years are filled with so much emotion, anxiety, pain, and happiness that it is a wonder that teenagers can string two sentences together and sound intelligent sometimes.
Im notsure I would say this about Penny by the end of the book, but she definitely changes in a way that reminds the readers there might be something better out there if we slow down and take it one step at a time.
I think we can all agree that the teenage years sometimes feel like a race car speeding down the tracks atmph with no sign of slowing down.
If a reader is looking for a book where the story doesnt have to make sense and doesnt mind the format not being in typical paragraph format, then I might recommend this book, but on a rating scale, Id have to give itout of.
It wasnt written badly, but the voice, although accurate, and the pacing made me feel like I was pulling teeth to get to the end.
.