Teenagers & Adolescence

Allison Pearson follows up I Don't Know How She Does It with I Think I Love You, a screwball comic novel about the lengths a girl will go to for her teen idol.

The film The Kids Are All Right stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple whose two teenage children have decided to track down their moms' anonymous sperm donor, played by Mark Ruffalo. Director Lisa Cholodenko explains how her own experiences inspired the film.

Filmmaker Debra Granik knew right away that she wanted to adapt Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel Winter's Bone for the big screen. Granik and Woodrell discuss the process of turning the meth-fueled family drama into an award-winning film.

David Edelstein reviews "Youth in Revolt."

In a 1996 interview, the late memoirist shares richly detailed memories of his Limerick childhood and his adult life in the United States.

In Francine Prose's new novel, Goldengrove, a sister's sudden death leaves a young girl adrift. Prose is the author of 15 previous novels, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, as well as the nonfiction book Reading Like a Writer.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new documentary American Teen. Directed by Nanette Burnstein, the film follows a group of seniors at a high school in Warsaw, Indiana.

When a Portland teenager accidentally kills a security guard at the local skate park, he pulls into himself rather than talking to the police. Gus Van Sant's film explores the teen's thoughts and actions in a free-form style that critic David Edelstein calls "a raging success."

Jason Reitman's new teen comedy Juno, like Knocked Up, disguises its family-values stance with a liberal helping of four-letter words. Film critic David Edelstein says it's targeted firmly at the tweener crowd, and the relentless banter of Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets taken to a new level here. But every character's wisecracks, as in bad Neil Simon, come from the same place.

Writer and producer Ed Burns draws on his experience as a former Baltimore detective to create the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, now in its fourth season. It's a crime drama with a central theme of surveillance technology used to capture drug dealers.

Coach Bill Resler and former player Devon Crosby Helms are at the heart of the basketball documentary The Heart of the Game. The film follows the Roosevelt High School Roughriders, a Seattle-area girls' team, for six seasons.

Our film critic reviews Down in the Valley, the new film by writer/director David Jacobson, starring Edward Norton, David Morse, and Bruce Dern.

Leisure suits, big hair and the Bee Gees are just part of the draw of a new book, Bar Mitzvah Disco. With essays from Jonathan Safran Foer, Sarah Silverman and others, the book documents bar and bat mitzvahs from the 1970s through the '90s.

Paul Feig is the creator of the cult classic TV series Freaks and Geeks. His new book Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin, is the follow-up to his 2002 book Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence. Feig was an actor before moving on to writing for TV and film.

Writer, actor, lawyer Edwin John Wintle has written his first book, a memoir about what happened when his 13-year old niece came to live with him. His book is Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle's Memoir.

The new film from director Todd Solondz, Palindromes, begins with a funeral for Dawn Weiner, the memorable, much-maligned 11-year-old from the 1995 Solondz film Welcome to the Dollhouse. The main character of the new film is Dawn's cousin, but she's played by seven different and distinct actors.

Her new movie, which she wrote and directed, is The Ballad of Jack and Rose, starring Miller's husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, along with Camilla Belle and Catherine Keener. It's about an aging hippie father and his daughter who are living on an abandoned commune but come face-to-face with the contemporary world. Miller is the daughter of the legendary playwright Arthur Miller.

Miriam Toews has written her third book, A Complicated Kindness. One reviewer called it "a kind of Catcher in the Rye for Mennonite girls."

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Mean Girls. Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey wrote the screenplay, based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and other Realities of Adolescence.

She wrote the screenplay for the new movie Mean Girls. It's based on the book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. Fey also co-stars in the film, along with Lindsay Lohan, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler and Ana Gasteyer. Fey is co-head writer and writing supervisor for Saturday Night Live. She is the show's first female head writer. She also co-hosts SNL's Weekend Update. She and the writing staff won an Emmy Award for their work in 2002. Before SNL, Fey wrote and performed for the famed Second City in Chicago.