How I remember the agony of junior high! Especially the cold-water shock of sixth grade, when it seemed every girl in my class had spent the summer perfecting her coiffure while I was collecting bugs, playing softball, and racing down the block when I heard the diesel rumbling of the bookmobile idling at the corner.

I was a bit of a late bloomer, but soon I was a pain in the ass like my peers: selfish, petulant, prone to crying at everything and nothing at all. I remember waves of contrary emotions crashing over me, and feeling powerless in their wake. It was like a very acute case of PMS. That lasted three years.

Lauren Kessler, in her book “My Teenage Werewolf”, captures it all – to a painful degree. Feeling hurt and confused by the growing estrangement between her daughter and herself, and fearing they may end up having the same distant relationship she had with her mother, Kessler inserts herself into her daughter Lizzie’s life. She attends her classes. She plays online games with her. She volunteers at her field trips and summer camps. She studies Lizzie as, she says, an anthropologist would—an anthropologist who can’t resist the occasional nagging about dirty laundry, homework, and the suitability (and lack thereof) of teen attire.

Kessler is very honest in her portraits of both herself and her daughter. Mom is a demanding perfectionist who struggles to rein in her criticism, and who consistently puts her daughter on the defensive. Daughter is mercurial, stubborn, and willing to verbally cut her mother to the bone to give herself a little breathing room. Though some scenes in the book made me wince (for both mother and daughter – I ping-ponged between which “character” I identified with), the book overall was told with humor and a lot of compassion for both parties. Kessler writes:

This is the best and worst thing about being the mother of a daughter—the way everything she does reminds you of what you did or wish you did or wish you didn’t do; the way everything she does brings back your own childhood, your own teen years. You understand. She thinks you’re clueless. You want to save her. She doesn’t want to be saved.

Through her year-long research into her daughter’s life, Kessler learns to back off (but not too far), to listen and offer counsel (carefully, and not too much! and for god’s sake don’t start yelling), and to appreciate that she and her daughter are distinct individuals, with different goals, attitudes, and tastes. Simple lessons to sum up; far more difficult to live.

This is a book for those who are in the thick of the teen years with their own werewolves, as well as for those of us who have a few more years of yips and yelps before the real fangs come in.

Check out Lauren’s blog, where Lauren and Lizzie post their different perspectives on chores, best junk foods, and doing nothing. http://www.myteenagewerewolf.com/