A new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides follows three college students graduating in the midst of an economic downturn. With unemployment around 10 percent, the characters try to find ways to cope — moving home, busing tables, applying to graduate school. One flees the country entirely, running from the recession at home to volunteer in India. It sounds like a novel set in 2011, until Eugenides' characters start calling each other from land line phones and writing letters home from abroad. 

The coming-of-age story is a summer book standard. So many of us remember spending our lazy summer days with Francie from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," the March sisters of "Little Women" or Holden Caulfield of "Catcher in the Rye." The next pick for our Summer Book Club furthers this tradition through a uniquely accurate adolescent voice. Jo Ann Beard's "In Zanesville" follows a teenage narrator and her best friend through high school life in 1970s small-town Illinois. The novel is so transfixing, Celeste claimed she couldn't put it down. John finished it and immediately passed it along to his daughters.

Recent studies highlight all kinds of benefits from having an affectionate sister. According to researchers, sisters have been found to protect their adolescent siblings from numerous problems, including loneliness and depression. So, what’s so special about sisters? The Takeaway explores some of the latest ideas.

It's back to school time, when more kids are spending time in gym class and after-school sports. However, it's not all fun and games, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The report is called “Sport Related Concussion in Children and Adolescents,” and it reveals just how dangerous concussions can be to developing humans, interfering not only with physical health, but learning.

Today, a new movie called "The Kids are All Right" hits theaters, and for A.O. Scott, film critic from The New York Times, it inspired him to ask: “are the kids REALLY all right?”

In a new article called “They Grow Up So Quickly, Don’t They?”, he looks at this summer’s new releases that speak to the state of childhood and adolescence and family today.