Blame My Brain - M's review

Blame My Brain: The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed by Nicola Morgan

 

Review by M

Blame My Brain: The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed is a popular science book written specifically for teenagers and this edition has been updated to include new scientific developments. However, the author, Nicola Morgan, is not a scientist and this is perhaps both the book’s main strength and its weakness. If you’re the curious sort, who’d like a bit of a laugh and an easy introduction to a very big subject, this is not a bad place to start.

As a parent, one of the things that often makes me laugh is when people say ‘I sound like my mother’ or ‘I’m turning into my parents’. That downcast utterance usually follows a spate of exasperated hand-gesturing about why our once very lovely teenagers are now the untidiest, rudest, deafest people we’ve met in a long time (of course, Little M is perfect). Blame My Brain attempts to cast some light (and a lot of thought) on how the growing teenage brain affects this behaviour.

The book puts the science into easy to read, follow and understand language. It’s quite chatty and funny – a bit like a popular magazine. Each chapter presents an everyday scenario highlighting a particular kind of teen behaviour – e.g untidiness, sleeping late, taking risks, studying, sticking with the girls or boys, drinking alcohol, smoking. Morgan then attempts to explain this behaviour by discussing what science thinks is going on in the brain. At the end of each chapter, she presents a number of alternate (and sometimes conflicting) theories from different areas of science. There is also usually some kind of test-yourself quiz so you can find out how good you are at reading people’s faces or how you understand risk.

By including the different theories and the soft quizzes, I think Morgan reminds readers that knowledge is created by us – humans - and it changes. Individual scientists and disciplines can differ in both their approach which affects their findings and explanations. She also attempts to show that what science often presents is a specific kind of average and that there isn’t just one type or explanation for behaviour. She shows how everyday people can use this science to draw their own conclusions by offering up her own opinion which often draws in her everyday observations or experiences.

Morgan goes to great lengths to emphasise that individual teenagers do behave very differently – and in one chapter about dopamine she emphasises that statistics show that the majority of teenagers do not drink alcohol excessively or have underage sex. She also reminds us that adults can display some of the behaviour that is frequently attributed to teenagers. Similarly, in the chapter on sex differences, she emphasises that there are spectrums (although I don’t think she does this strongly enough and this was my least favourite chapter – I’d be interested to see what teens thinks themselves).

Sometimes, I was unclear about which bits were Morgan’s interpretations and what came direct from research. Even though there are endnotes for the research that she has included, I would have liked more detailed citations. What she also omits to do is to make it clear that in popularising and condensing the science, she is eliminating a lot of detail that makes a big difference in how we should understand and interpret science. I sometimes felt like the science faded into the background.

Overall, this book provides an introduction to the topic of being a teenager, brains, behaviour, causality and science methodologies. One of the book’s strengths is that it encourages and shows you how to care and develop your own brain. While providing some explanations for brains and behaviour, what I think it could also do is get readers asking questions.

 

Publication details: Walker, May 2013 (updated edition), London, paperback

This copy: received for review from the publisher

 

Mortal Chaos - M's review

Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson

Mortal Chaos has been nominated for the Carnegie medal 2013. This review forms part of our Longlist shadowing and has taken the judging criteria into consideration.

The premise for Mortal Chaos intrigued me. It looked like it could be a complex, exciting and thought provoking story.  From the first page, it quite literally puts chaos theory’s butterfly effect into the story. Chaos theory is complicated but basically suggests that just one small change can cause much bigger and broader changes. even in a determined system. 

Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson

Mortal Chaos is a page-turning global action adventure. There are quite a few characters and sub-plots, as you would expect in order to demonstrate the butterfly effect. But the plot itself is thin: a butterfly startles a rabbit one morning in Sauncy Wood, England. The plot revolves around the events that this sets in motion around the world, very few of which are pleasant (although this in itself is thought-provoking). Some of the connected events also seemed a bit too contrived (e.g. film crews and producers) and I thought some of the links between  characters and events was occasionally tenuous (again, an area for debate).

The characters are vast and include a mountaineer on Everest, a woman pilot, a hungry six year old in Africa, a trainee astronaut, jockeys, vets, American psychos, thieves and kids who bunk school. Perhaps because the novel is quite short and there isn’t enough space or time to develop the characters (and because the focus is obviously on the events), the characters are quite flat. We don’t learn very much about them. However, many of them were stereotypically typecast – like the gambling plumber, an American psycho-divorcee, rich Japanese, poor African villagers. Interestingly, the two main female characters, Tina and Kuni, are not put into gender stereotyped roles, but while not giving anything away, male heroism dominates this novel. On the whole, I didn’t like many of the characters.

The language is highly accessible. There is also a lot of ‘telling’ rather than reading between the lines which makes the story very easy to follow (perhaps too easy).   With very short chapters, this was a page-turning quick read. I finished it – and quickly. But, I was relieved to finish it. The majority of the characters and plot situations revolved around adults in adult roles and I felt like I was reading a quick-read adult fiction novel rather than a complex teen novel.  

Clearly I am turning into an old prude because some of the gory details seemed superfluous to me and didn't enhance the story. The last page really turned my stomach. Of course, I know that none of this bothers a lot of other readers....as Little M would say, it probably just wasn't my cup of tea. I'm really disappointed because I wanted to love this story!

Other action-adventure reads on the Carnegie longlist include Call Down Thunder by Daniel Finn (it is an accessible action adventure that ticks a lot more of the Carnegie boxes for me – but it does have a singular plot and linear structure which is both less demanding and less exciting).

For a completely different perspective which highly recommends Mortal Chaos, see Beth Kemp’s review.

 

Publication details: Oxford University Press, 2012, Oxford, paperback

This copy: received for reviewing the Carnegie longlist from the publisher