Look at these Books...

This week’s book review… In our allykatzz.com book club, tween girls rate books:
2 Paws Up = Fabulous!
1 Paw Up = So-So
No Paws Up = Skip It

Here are some of their top “2 Paws UP”…


Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
“This is the best book ever!!! any one who loves romance should read it !!!!!! it's about a grl named bella and she falls in luv w/ a hot vampire ! and stephanie meyer is now my new fav author, besides Meg Cabot! READ IT!!!!!!” Review by Rehobothgrl1, age 12

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
"there is this book called star girl by Jerri Spenneli. it's about this wierd girl who tries to fit in with every one else.she also changes her name ALOT. one was Pocketmouse. she has a RAT name cookie. but anyway, she get's a makeover and everyone hates her more! so she goes back to being her plain old selph..... for more GR8 details, read the book." Review by gothgirl, age 14

Chicken Soup for the Girl’s Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen and Irene Dunlap
"This is an AWESOME book that helps girls understand other people's life and how they get through it. I read it cover 2 cover and it made me cry." Review by redcarpetwalker, age 15

Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
"has anyone read the book? it's SO good. it's about this girl who goes to boarding school after her mother's death. and she starts having these strange visions that take her to another realm. she takes along these other girls: felicity, pippa, and ann into the realms too. a great book,though it can get alittle freaky at some parts, 2 paws up!" Review by smartgirl, age 12

Posted by Denise Restauri

Think You've Had a Bad Day?

When you think you've had a bad day or a bad week, try to remember that our tween girls have a lot to deal with in their worlds. We really need to LISTEN to what they are saying... like these stories... straight from their allykatzz.com blogs...

"i dont feel good... ok yeah well i went to the doctor and they made me wait in there for a hour and a half and then they looked at my ears and it was all red and crummy and so they made me wait another hour for something and then they gave it to me and then it took about another hour in cvs to get my medicine and so i was like all worn down and whiny. and then we got home and amy wouldnt stop gripping at me, and my stepdad is in the worst mood. he is like, IM SO SICK AND TIRED OF PEOPLE NOT DOING WAHT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO! YALL GIRLS ARE SO IRRESPONSIBLE! WHHEN I SAY CLEAN THE POOL AND LIVING ROOM U CLEAN IT! THATS IT UR GROUNDED! And i am like HUHLLLOOO IM SICKKK!!! and so im extremely grumpy and my mom wont listen to me becacuse "she doesnt have time to listen to me grip, because she has billls to pay and why must she carry all this weight on her tiny shoulders" ugggh!!!! im tired of all this! i wish everything was perfect! and then like my real dad wont answer his phone! and so i dont have anyone to vent to and i mean kaci wont listen cuz she is like somewhere and amy is weird and jace is gone and my older brother is in collage! agggggggh!!"

Are tween girls picked on for their smarts? "It's fun to be smart, right? Knowing that you'll always do your best and have friends in your classes and such. But then there's the kids who are 'less smart' or just don't try as hard as they could, and that usually leads to [smart kids] getting picked on and made fun of, because you're 'brainy'. Has this ever happened to you? I know it has to me plenty of times, and it doesn't help that I wear glasses, either. But I enjoy school, and I think they should too, so just ignore them, or 'kill them with kindness' my mom always tells me, and eventually they'll bug off."

My life sucks... "i really need some advice on cheering myself up. cuz i feel like giving up on trying. my friends aren't in my class and at lunch ppl just randomly look at me and whisper to each other. i don't wanna hear ppl say to just ignore it, caz i just can't. almost every night in my bed i just break down and cry. i don't know what to do. and it's not just school it's at home too caz my grandpa alwayz teases me and i just can't take it (plus he critzices me and my dad all the time). nobody likes me and i only have two frndz and i barly ever see them. i reely need advice on living life, caz i wanna quit.help me plz (i've even gone goth inside)."

Boys confuse our tween girls big time. "One day they like you the next they dont... How are you supposed to know??????????????? This guy that i like my best friend likes to and he is so complicated and its like OMG can he make up his mind because one day he likes me the next he likes her...We both call him Mr. complicated!!!"

Mi~own~lil~lalaland. When your tween girl appears to be in LaLaLand, listen closely… she may actually be there!
"at my school, appearance was everything. what you wore, what you looked like, your weight, your bffs and your bfs, thats all that mattered. no one cared about anything else. you were always judged by your appearance, and if you didn't make a good impression, people would look down on you. now i'm the kinda girl that would be looked down upon. i wasn't pretty, i was nerdy, hung out with the smart kids, a band geek, had no guy friends. i was not near popular at school. one day i hear an announce ment that the first school dance was next friday. "ok," i thought. "nothing big." but then i get asked to the dance by a jock. whoa. i was in total and complete shock. i could not believe my ears. of course i accepted! so i met him at the dance, and he had bought a rose for me. i had never had anything like that happen to me before, and i was already in high school! soon enough, a slow song came on and he asked me to dance. i was like, "omg im dreaming this, someone wake me up before i actually think its true. " i never woke up, so i danced all night and partied with my date, and finally when it was time to leave, i got a kiss from him. my first kiss ever. i could not wait to tell my friends about the dance! but then again this all happened in mi~own~lil~lalaland"

Posted by Denise Restauri

GOTHIC LOLITA is NOT for U.S. Tween Girls

This is great for tonight's dinner conversation… ask your daughter what she thinks about the “gothloli” look. Some tween girls were blogging about this Japanese Street Fashion so we showed 1,000 allykatzz girls this photo and asked them to give us their pulse check. Here’s what they said – be fun to see what YOUR tween girl says…

12% - Love it, Want it!
19% - COOL, I might wear it sometimes
40% - Cool, but not for me!
29% - ICK! No Way!

A 12-year old girl from CA says: “subtract the stockings, shoes, and bag and give her knee-high stilleto boots w/a boho bag in pink it will be a VERY cute outfit.”

While a 14-year-old girl from CA has this take: I wouldn’t wear it but I love the person with the guts to do it!”

And this 15-year-old girl from Wisconsin thinks like a mom: “psshh over my dead body!”

Posted by Denise Restauri

FAB AllyKatzz.com Safety Review

Ken Cooper, creator of Family WebWatch gave AllyKatzz a great review... including: "College students are hired to monitor every bit of information that is being transmitted on its site. So you won’t find any photos with provocative poses or trash talk. Finally, a site that gets it!" Please check it out!

Posted by Denise Restauri

To IM or NOT to IM?

An email from a parent to me: “From a parent perspective this IM stuff is really disturbing and a bit out of control. It is hard to know how to exercise appropriate controls.”

I can so relate. Ally, my tween daughter, was IM and text message obsessed. She was texting on her sidekick3 and IMing on her laptop… sometimes she did both at the same time, to the same person. I’m not making that up. Then the “friends of friends” started to appear… and one of those friends wasn’t the 14-year-old friend’s cousin that he claimed to be and that lead to my declaration: “NO IM or texting for the next month.” At first, Ally wasn’t sure how she could survive without her lifeline to the outside world. I made a suggestion, “Talk on the phone and have a REAL conversation.” She looked at me like I just dropped in from Pluto. She insisted that NO one talks on the phone. But within a few days, a strange thing happened…the phone actually starting ringing – Ally’s friends were calling her. Fast forward 30 days: Ally wasn’t bugging me to get her texting and IM rights reinstated. Here’s her take on IM, texting and talking: “it’s so much better to talk to my friends… but I never knew what I was missing because ever since 6th grade, IM and texting are our lives.” They're tweens... they only know what they know.

We asked the tween girls on allykatzz.com to tell us if they could live withOUT IM and texting. Results were mixed. Just wait til they hear about the 13-year-old Teen Texting Champ… she won $25,000 for having the fastest texting fingers in the nation.

Posted by Denise Restauri

Tween Girls Blog About VT

How are tween girls making sense out of the senseless Virginia Tech massacre? Should we talk about it with our girls? What do we tell them?

Here’s a reality check: If you think you’re protecting your tween girl by NOT talking about it, you’re so wrong. Girls are talking and thinking about it and if you don’t talk to them, they’ll go to their favorite information source… their friends. Think about the telephone game that goes like this: Girl #1 says, “Betty and Veronica are best friends.” By the time it gets to Girl #10, the message is, “Betty plays the harmonica and she stinks!” Imagine what happens to information that is mind boggling to start with. Tween girls need to hear it from YOU.

Here’s what tween girls are saying – straight from their allykatzz.com blogs:

“wow. to horrible for words. i bet this whole thing could have been prevented too. Colombine could have been. You know why that happened? Bulling. Im sure that some days, we all feel so bad that we just want to pick on other weaker kids at our school, but.....one thing leads to another.....which leads to another. Then, before you know it, the whole school is picking on that one kid… seriously girls. if you are being bullied,IGNORE THEM!!! and to all you bullies out there, stop. immediatly. You are to weak to take the conciquenses. Yes. I did just call you weak bully. Bullies are increadibly weak. In fact, in 5th grade i was bullied so much. When i went to middle school, those bullies went from being popular, to having no friends at all. I was more confident too. Maybe the shooter at VT was bullied too… stop the bulling NOW. Do you want your school to be the next massacre of innociount people?” age 13, CA

WARNING: before talking to your tween girl, you must deal with your own angers and fears. This is from a 10-year-old girl from VA. Not the message we want to give our tween girls:
“My mom sent an E-mail to one of the radio dudes and she told him that my sisters and I would not go to college unarmed that we would have a gun with us and that she would rather have us expelled than killed”

Bad information gets worse when it includes bad messages like the one in this blog: dump your boyfriend and he may kill you. (We didn’t post this blog on allykatzz.com.) This is from a 15 year-old tween girl: “A south Korean guy killed 32..yes THIRTY-TWO people...He was a senior at Virgina Tech and can you guess why he killed 32 people? Becuase his GF dumped him for sum1 else!! Yep...crazy isn't it...then he killed himself! He first killed his ex-GF and her friend in the dorms then went across the campas which is half a mile to look for the guy. He culdn't find him so he killed 30 other people.”

Posted by Denise Restauri

Mean Boys????

We know how “mean girls” can destroy the self-esteem of our tween girls. But what about “mean boys?” Here’s a story from a 12-year-old girl from Wisconsin – could this girl be someone you know? “So I was in science today… and I was by my friends. There was a boy sitting by them...like one of the "popular" boys...and he was doing a worksheet on genes. he had to check his pulse rate for one. he tested it for 5 seconds and said he had 6 beats. I tested my for 5 seconds and i had like 9 or 10. and i said that outloud. and this is what he said to me..."That's because you had body fat and it takes more energy to pump your blood." he said it in one of those "thinks he's funny voices." I'm like..."I'm not fat!" Then my friend...MY FRIEND...was laughing but saying that's not funny and that's not nice...but still she was laughing. the other girls were not laughing and telling him that that was mean. I'm not kidding...I almost started crying...I just wanted to run into the bathroom. I've never been called fat before and i just felt sick and bad. so now just a few hours after i'm like watching what i eat and i don't know what to do...see I'm in perfect shape. I'm a dancer and very active....i just can't keep my mind off of him saying that. what should I do?"
Posted by Denise Restauri

A Day In HER Tween Life

This is a great way to strike up a fun conversation with your tween daughter. Read it together and share your favorite parts of this tween girl's day.

“2day waz national gay day at school and we actually observed it!!! isn't that crazy!! also my dad got in a car accident(so show some love) but i'm pretty sure he's alright!!i hope!!!! also my friend katie got grounded 4 chipping her tooth isn't that STUPID!!!!so yeah...that stinks!!!lets see what else...oh i like failed my math quiz but doesn't everybody every now and then!!but anyway i like stink at math...and tommorow i have a math test like i hate math big time but my mom says that as long as i try my hardest she doesn't really care!!!isn't that showing signs of being an awesome mom...of course it is!!! why cuz she jus is an awesome mom!!! i actually have a pretty cool brother too...SERIOUSLY!!!he's awesome!!well that's about it for today!!love yall!!” … age 13 from Pennsylvania
Posted by Denise Restauri

Tween Girls Say What?

Adult: "What happened in school today?"
Tween Girl: "Nothing."
Adult: "Really, nothing happened?"
Tween Girl: "Yep, nothing."
End of conversation.


Tween Girls Say What? is your ultimate daily guide to what tween girls are REALLY saying, thinking, doing and dreaming – straight from their allykatzz.com blogs (with permission). Boys, fashion, celebrities, school, parents, siblings, mean girls, best friends, books, movies, music and everything tween – I’ll unwrap it all and deliver it daily. You’ll be amazed to find out what “nothing” really means.

Posted by Denise Restauri