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Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012)

Författare till Fråga Alice

13 verk 10,327 medlemmar 255 recensioner 2 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Verk av Beatrice Sparks

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Namn enligt folkbokföringen
Sparks, Beatrice Ruby Mathews
Födelsedag
1917-01-15
Avled
2012-05-25
Kön
female
Nationalitet
USA
Födelseort
Goldburg, Idaho, USA
Bostadsorter
Logan, Idaho, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Provo, Utah, USA
Utbildning
Brigham Young University
University of California, Los Angeles
Yrken
Psychologist
Author
therapist
Mormon youth counselor
Organisationer
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Kort biografi
Beatrice Ruby Mathews Sparks was born January 15, 1917 in the small mining town of Goldberg, Idaho.
Her parents were Vivian Johns and Leonard Clarence Mathews. She was the third of five children: von, Beulah, Roma and Robert. She grew up in Logan. Later she moved to southern California where she married LaVorn Greer Sparks March 1, 1936 in Los Angeles. She was the mother of four children: Jimmy Lavonette deceased, Yvonne Suzette, LaVorn Jr. (Sparky), Cythia Sue. She has 11 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren whom she loves with all her heart.
She died peacefully May 25, 2012.
Bea and LaVorn moved from Los Angeles to Provo in 1964 where she continued her productive writing career. As a writer, she began by writing magazine and newspaper articles and a series of comic books in the 1940's. She then began writing books, which were mostly geared toward youth to expose the teen challenges of the day, among which are: Key to Happiness, Go Ask Alice, Jays Journal, Voices, My Friend, Annie's Baby, It happened to Nancy to name a few. Some were published in 13 languages and were best sellers. Go Ask Alice was made into a movie for TV. Others are presently under contract for movies. She wrote these books to make a difference in people's lives and she did. She received her doctorate degree as a grown woman and grandma.
She and LaVorn served an LDS Mission. She was VERY active in the community and also lectured all over the U.S. as well as in many foreign countries. She served on the BYU Library Board and was active in the LDS Church. She was a wonderful mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, and friend. Her family and the Gospel of Jesus Christ were the most important things in her life. She enjoyed working outside in her yard and helping others and loved to walk and always kept herself in good physical shape, but she also LOVED See's Candy.
She traveled the world but her first love was The Lord, her husband, family and work. She left the world a better place than she found it and she made a real difference in many people's lives.

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Even though it turns out that the book is fraudulent I really enjoyed reading this book when I was young, although it didn’t put me off trying recreational drugs. Now that I’m old, I still enjoy reading it from time to time.
 
Flaggad
laurelzito | 215 andra recensioner | Jan 28, 2024 |
The Book, Go Ask Alice, by and anonymous author is a horrifying true story of a teenager who gets introduced to a world of sex and drugs. Alice doesn't even realize it but, she's not only hurting herself but her family too. The details in this book about her obsession with drugs and the trouble she gets into will keep you second guessing about what else could go wrong. Alice is a normal teenager with a decent life until one day she ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. After she realizes the "good" feeling that drugs give her, her life could never go back to how it used to be. Although this book contains a highly detailed description of drugs and the emotions that are felt when used, it informs the readers of the negative effects that follow after the use of these harmful drugs. Once I started reading this book it was nearly impossible to put it down. On a scale from one to ten I would rate this book a nine. I would recommend this book to teens who are going through hard times in their life and they think drugs are the only way out. This book includes social values such as allowing the public to view today's problems that exist throughout the world involving teens. We have all heard our elders say those words," don't do drugs," some choose to listen when many other end up ruining their life by getting involved.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
b00kdarling87 | 215 andra recensioner | Jan 7, 2024 |
I was appalled when I found out that all of the books written by anonymous teenagers and edited by Beatrice Sparks were actually works of fiction. I started with Go Ask Alice and read a few more after that. It just irks me when an author says a book is non-fiction when in actuality it is fiction.
 
Flaggad
DKnight0918 | 9 andra recensioner | Dec 23, 2023 |
I read Go Ask Alice for the first time yesterday and had what was for me a profound reaction. I was shaken, I was stunned, I was moved in a way that few books have moved me. I believed the story completely, though the unnamed main character seemed surprisingly literate, intelligent, and self-aware. Perhaps not the typical American or West Coast fifteen year old girl, but, hey, Anne Frank was several cuts above typical too. Maybe "Alice" was special. I liked her, she had zest in her hopes and reactions to the wide emotional swings teenagers have. She was perhaps a kind of teen-age Madame Bovary, whose lust for life tragically spilled over into uncontrollable excess.

Fast forward twenty-four hours and now I find out the whole thing may well be a hoax. The Anne Frank / Bovary qualities I admired now appear to reflect no more than faulty execution by the Mormon social worker who penned it anonymously but then sometime later decided to come forward to collect fame and royalties. Ouch.

First reaction: What a fool I am to have been so totally taken in! And what an out-of-it fool never to have read the book before or registered the chatter about its authenticity. What kind of head-in-the-sand clown am I? (Maybe that's all a little harsh).

But wait. To be honest, Go Ask Alice continues to have deep effect on me. I'm still shaking from it. What's with that, I wonder.

Then I notice that this book has been reviewed over 11,500 times on Goodreads, and many if not most of the reviews seem to dismiss it totally as hoax and/or propaganda. But then I check out where the book ends up on the lists: #9 on Best Teen Books on Real Problems, #86 on Best Young Adult Books. Is the better performance on lists because anti-drug propagandists somehow prefer list voting to review writing? Could there be something therapeutic or even curative in this book that review writers are loath to come out and admit?

For me there's a great deal in it that's worth my while. It's about important stuff. It's about how, for adolescents who are passionate about life, the pieces don't fit. It's about how their peers are as confused as they are and how the grown-ups are witless and clueless, having apparently mostly forgotten what it was like being young, passionate, vulnerable, and transitional, instead regarding it all as a "normal" rite of passage. And yet the pain of this normalcy can be so intense, too intense for us adults to condone having largely damped or mislaid it. For me, "Alice's" intense pain was real, even if she wasn't.

Adolescence is a life or death matter, I conclude, and all adolescents die, perhaps not literally but surely in terms of the painful changes they go through and the hopes, ideals, and personae that are lost and betrayed. We could say they die sacrificially so the grown-up world they eventually join can go on with its deadly norms and, as we see today, more stupid wars.

At the risk of ranting like a graybeard Holden Caulfield, my takeaway is that adolescence is indeed sacrificial, that it has tragic elements, that the pain is real, searing and sometimes appalling; and that the sacrifices are not recognized as they should be. Maybe it's my own pained adolescence crying out to me right now; if so, I'll memorialize that too.

So, hoax or no, five stars for the hurt it delivered that I needed to relive.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Cr00 | 215 andra recensioner | Apr 1, 2023 |

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Associerade författare

Remco Campert Translator
Max Beluffi Afterword
C. Corsi Translator

Statistik

Verk
13
Medlemmar
10,327
Popularitet
#2,301
Betyg
½ 3.4
Recensioner
255
ISBN
121
Språk
9
Favoritmärkt
2

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