Help yourself to kids edition of ‘O’Reilly Factor’ book

By Lesley Cruickshank
Sissonville High School

I like to read. I love everything from science fiction to children’s books to biographies, but one thing I’ve never really gotten into is self-help books. My opinion has always been that they were stupid, and the adult writers who penned them had no idea what they were talking about.

Then, my grandmother gave me Bill O’Reilly’s “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids” for Christmas. Written by the Fox newsman with co-author Charles Flowers, the book is aimed at teens and deals with important issues like parents, religion, self-esteem and sports. A new chapter regarding cyber-bullying has been added to the book’s recent paperback release.

Most young people (myself included) wouldn’t even notice the book if they walked by an entire row of them in a bookstore — and if they did notice, they probably wouldn’t give it any thought beyond that glance. I know I didn’t even think about reading “The O’Reilly Factor” until one boring Saturday afternoon.

The book begins with a chapter about friends. Almost every kid I know cares more about his or her friends than pretty much anything else in the world, so I thought O’Reilly was off to a good start with that.

As I read the chapter, I realized that everything he wrote about applied to me or someone I knew. The greatest part was that the opinions in the book didn’t necessarily match the opinions of the adults that I am around daily.

In the book, O’Reilly is very straightforward with his position on certain subjects and uses his own real-life experiences to support his beliefs. He also includes quotes from teens who watch his show at the beginning of each chapter. The teens wrote O’Reilly regarding the biggest problems in their lives. Little things such as these make the book more realistic and readable.

I truly wish that when I first started middle school I would have had a book like “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids” to give me an idea of how people were going to treat me over the next few years. The book is a positive manual for some of the hardest situations kids can be put in today. It leaves absolutely nothing out. It’s a genius piece of work.

When I finished the book, I felt like I’d discovered a new way to view life. Lately I’ve had problems with depression and the reason for that seems to be that I make everything out to be a negative incident. The secret that I learned from this book is to look optimistically at the world and to be more of a participant of life rather than a spectator.

Because of everything I learned from “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” I would recommend it to everyone. If a person were willing to follow O’Reilly’s advice, he or she would be able to think openly and live each day like it were the first day of his or her life. What an excellent feeling that would be.