This book takes some weighty questions, and explores them in an accessible and approachable way, while simultaneously introducing a number of famous philosophers. A teacher鈥檚 guide is included in the front of the book. Philosophy for Teens is structured into four parts: Beauty, Truth, Justice and God. Each of these parts has 2-4 chapters that are presented in the form of a question. For example, a chapter in the last (God) section is entitled 鈥淲hy Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?鈥滶ach question starts with two teens discussing something, such as whether beauty is a matter of good taste, or is in the eye of the beholder.
After that dialogue, the reader is prompted with thought-provoking questions to ponder, and then the chapter truly begins. Each chapter includes a separate text box with information about the philosopher that best relates to the chapter.
Kaye and Thomson provide readers with a wonderful introduction to philosophers, both ancient and more recent. Every chapter is comprehensive enough to leave the reader wanting more and considering things, yet not so difficult as to make their head hurt. Throughout the book, readers will find 鈥淭hought Experiments,鈥� which propose challenging questions for the reader to think about, or debate with their friends. Even better, each chapter ends with five methods of provoking further thought: Discussion Questions, Exercises, Activities, Community Action Steps, References and Further Reading.
There are a number of pictures included, mostly a small one of the philosopher in their related text box. This title could be read out of order, but it feels more natural to start at the beginning and work your way through. The back contains a few appendices and some other information: dialogue worksheet, the trial and death of Socrates and Plato鈥檚 theory of forms, empiricism, a glossary, and some information about the authors.
The book I am currently reading is Philosophy For Teens, by Sharon M.Kaye and Paul Thomson. This is an amazing fiction book that is primarily full of the opinions of philosophers. This book does exactly what it says and "Questions life's big ideas". The book is broken up into different topics/sections such as love,health,truth, and the importance of life. This book first gives a example of a made up conversation that brings up the topic to come,then moves on to modern opinions of the topic and questions people can have about the topic, and lastly it explains how philosophers find the topic and explain the topic into a great depth. This book really makes you think about life and really explains the things you are to afraid to question, or cannot find the answers to. In my opinion I would completely reccomend this book to just more then a teen audience. I would reccomend this book to anyone who is questioning life, and just someone who is in search of who they are. What I really liked about this book was how it was relatable. As a teenager myself I felt as though the examples such as the mock conversation and "in our society we value physical appearence,often more than personality" very relatable. This book is very easy to understand and uses philosophers such as Aristotle that everyone has heard of to really make their point. This book has helped me understand why the world is the way it is, it even reminded me of human nature. This is a great book and I reccomend it completely.
Great resource for teenagers (as the title suggests). I find that they respond really well to the dialogues and the little bit of drama they have to do to read them. The only problem with these books - though it's quite a significant one - is that they don't contain a method for how to conduct philosophical conversations, so, for those not already skilled at doing this, the books could be quite hard to use. However, this can be remedied by getting hold of a resource that does contain such a method such as The If Machine by Peter Worley (or, embarrassingly, me!).