Middle school, the transitional residence of adolescence, can be a daunting place to survive, let alone thrive, and even more painful to recall. Author Linda Perlstein takes readers on a first-hand immersion into the lives of five suburban Maryland middle school students in her book, Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, ISBN# 0-374-20882-4). Perlstein traces the teens' travails over the course of the 2001-2002 school year, chronicling their conversations, actions, thoughts, attitudes and values. Perlstein captures the daily stresses, pressures, temptations, changes, fears and insecurities of teens, who are trying to find, if not create, their identity and place in the world, and who simultaneously want freedom and reliance. Perlstein interjects anecdotal and factual evidence along the way about adolescent development (morphing brain from emotion/concrete to reason/abstract, body through puberty, etc.) and the adolescent experience (friends, family, school, media, technology, sex, spirituality, popularity, athletics, academics, teasing, etc.).

Not Much Just Chillin' serves as an excellent window into the lives of today's middle school aged youth. Be forewarned—it's a bumpy and wild ride. The words are frank, refreshingly "real" and at times explicit. But do not let this graphic content deter you from hearing the author's call to understand, embrace and love teens during their self-absorbed, moody, spontaneous, impulsive, awkward metamorphosis from child to adult. Those in ministry would do well to emulate Perlstein's approach of infiltrating the lives of teens, but to then use the acquired knowledge to discern their needs in order to dispense biblical truth.

  —Doug West