The perfect graduation gift: a wry look at the pleasures and anxieties of leaving home, penned with Judith Viorst's trademark blend of insight and humor. Millions of young people grew up with Viorst's bestselling children's book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." Now they can take her tongue-in-cheek advice for the next stage in their lives. Warm, funny, compassionate, and reassuring, "You're Officially a Grown-Up" describes -- in verse and illustrations -- all those terrifying but eagerly anticipated freedoms that go hand in hand with venturing out on your own and trying to make your way in the world. Ranging from the quandaries of giving up room, board, and the keys to the Ford to the thrills of playing by your own rules, Viorst will touch a nostalgic chord in those "official" grown-ups who have loved her other books about life's milestones. This special keepsake -- written from a loving parent's perspective -- is just the ticket high school and college graduates need for a one-way passage to adulthood.

"Whether she's finding herself or finding a sitter, contemplating her sex life as she rubs hormone night cream on her face, or wrestling with the contradiction of falling in love with a man her parents would actually approve of, Viorst transforms the familiar events of daily life into poems that make you laugh with recognition. Here is the young single girl leaving her parents' home for life in the big city ("No I do not believe in free love/And yes I will be home for Sunday dinners"). Here is the aspiring bohemian with an expensive liberal arts education, getting coffee and taking dictation, "Hoping that someday someone will be impressed/With all I know." Here is that married woman, coping with motherhood ("The tricycles are cluttering my foyer/The Pop Tart crumbs are sprinkled on my soul") and fantasy affairs ("I could imagine cryptic conversations, clandestine martinis...and me explaining that long kisses clog my sinuses") and all-too-real family reunions ("Four aunts in pain taking pills/One cousin in analysis taking notes"). And here she is at mid-life, wondering whether a woman who used to wear a "Ban the Bomb" button can find happiness being a person with a set of fondue forks, a fish poacher, and a wok. Every step of the way, It's Hard to be Hip Over Thirty and Other Tragedies of Married Life demonstrates once and for all that no one understands American women coming of age like Judith Viorst." -- Amazon.com.

Throughout her career, Judith Viorst has written numerous books reflecting on life as she ages. Now in her nineties, she shares her experiences in life's "final fifth" in this collection of poetry and essays. On her retirement community, she notes that it is "wonderful, marvelous, swell--good as gold. Except for this one little problem: everyone's old." On her late husband (who died of COVID-19 in 2022), she pleads: "I need you fixing our damn circuit breakers. I need you! Could you please stop being dead?" With humor and vulnerability, Viorst invites readers to dance with her between grief and levity and to enjoy the time we have left to share.

And so you've reached that time in life when you're starting to pick investments over adventure, clean over scenic, comfortable over intense; when, even though in your heart of hearts you're only seventeen, the rest of you is (how did it happen?) forty. The wise and witty lady of It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty is here to get you through those forty-ish years with poems that reflect our common shared experience. So let her help you take a look at that decade of sagging kneecaps and college reunions and fantasies of love in the afternoon; at Maoist kids, cholesterol counts, adult-education courses and other atrocities - which somehow just don't hurt so much when you laugh. A marvelous book filled with insight and warmth, How Did I Get to Be 40 ... & Other Atrocities is Judith Viorst at her best.