About the book
Lara is the quintessential teenager—inquisitive and heady with the typical adolescent arrogance of being a know-it-all. An unforeseen turn of events shakes her worldview, causing her to embark on a journey of rediscovery through new eyes. Her first lesson? All is not as it seems.
Lara’s Lessons is a book on the life lessons a young girl learns while navigating through choices, consequences and conversations. This book is an adolescent’s guide through issues that young teenage girls are often confronted with.
About the Author
Ronke Giwa Onafuwa is an award-winning broadcaster, content creator, girl-child advocate and convener of “Who’s that Girl Nigeria”; a forum geared towards empowering impressionable young girls in their teenage years. She is also the convener of “TalkMummy”, an online support group/community for mums based in Ibadan, Nigeria.
She currently works with SPLASH 105.5 FM, Ibadan, where she is head, Digital Media and also the host of a popular breakfast show, Morning Splash. She is married to Adebajo, and they have three children.
Reviews
As a young girl, I liked school only to the extent that it afforded me the opportunity to see my classmate with whom I exchanged Mills and Boon novels. In my well-developed imagination, I mingled with the characters in my novels, playing with friends in the fields and skilfully managing the amorous advances of the young men in my imaginary world.
This is why I totally relate to Lara’s frustrations in that halfway world of feeling like an adult but not quite being one. Of course, that feeling always leads to creative explorations, boundary testing and sleepless nights for parents!
I particularly love how Ronke Giwa has dealt with the most common issues and challenges that girls face in our mobile-first world: uncontrolled envy and pressure, dangerous desire for independence without true maturity, stranger danger online, peer pressure, self-knowledge, and independence of thought.
I heartily recommend this book to girls of all ages – so that those feelings can be interpreted by someone who has passed through that stage and is currently parenting girls at that age, too. Parents of the girl-child will find this book a valuable resource to get in tune with the internal battles and challenges that girls in the digital age face and learn how to speak in a language that can be easily understood.
Great job, Ronke. I look forward to your next book.
–Tolulope ‘Tolucomms’ Olorundero
Global Public Relations Consultant and former young girl!
Lara’s Lessons, strikes a chord, and tickles me in lots of ways. It is first a story of stories, and it is simply laid out in ten organic chapters, each dovetailing with the others, in an intricately didactic depth.
The book is a powerful testament to the author’s success at motherhood and her much-practised experience as a sought-after mentor to young people, especially millennials.
Ronke also tucks in some golden nuggets for teenagers/young adults on social media usage, speaking up, being original, handling bullying, financial freedom and much more.
One of the book’s highlights is the preponderance of open, parent-child, no-holds-barred conversations splashed across all the ten chapters. Ronke gives us surplus supplies of this openness when Lara and her parents communicate and engage.
Ultimately, the book, Lara’s Lessons, is an excellent work of art, whose beauty is in the elegantly crafted plot structure and the author’s panache with the English language.
The book comes highly recommended. It is a great gift for teenagers around you, especially girls.
–Michael Olatunbosun
Splash FM
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