Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, “It is better to light a candle / than curse the darkness.” One such candle for teenagers, in the dark fight against cancer, is Starlight’s Coping with Chemo website. According to its website: “Coping with Chemo is a series of webisodes written by teens with cancer to help other teens dealing with cancer. Each webisode addresses a different topic -- getting diagnosed with cancer, side effects of chemotherapy and other treatments, telling your friends, and celebrating your last treatment.” The importance of “written by teens for teens” becomes quite important here. Teens are likely to connect and “listen” to advice from their fellow teens quicker than from most adults. Consumer Health Information resources, such as Coping with Chemo, allow teenagers to connect with one another, whether they are separated by distance or not. Goal of Resource References for Teens In order to help teenagers deal with life impacting issues (such as chemotherapy), information professionals must be aware of the developmental stages of adolescence. In particular, teenagers go through “Adolescent Ecocentrism” where their thoughts begin changing as they build on their conceptual and critical thinking skills. Teenagers often have an “imaginary audience” where, in the likely case of having a bad hair day, their day is “ruined” because they believe everyone will notice. Information Needs of the Ordinary Adolescent Quality of Resource The quality of the resource, Coping with Chemo, is excellent. Given the fact that the majority of information is presented through multimedia, the “readability” of the resource is perfect for teens of various learning backgrounds. Those teens, whom have reading or learning difficulties, can still get access to the same information as those teens without reading or learning difficulties. This is important because, when coping with Chemotherapy, every teenager has the same vital questions running through their minds which they seek the answers . Level of Recommendation The visual presentation of Coping with Chemo’s information appears to be quite relevant as well as easy to follow. Although teenagers may not make the same emotional connection as if a real teen were speaking to them, for the sake of narration and illustrating situations, the cartoons work perfectly for presenting clear, concise information. Younger teens will love the cartoons; those teens nearer to Young Adulthood may be first turned off from the cartoon page. When clicking further, teens are brought to information and videos of real teens speaking about their stories; therefore, the website becomes an introduction to something much more emotionally acceptable for teens. Lance Armstrong, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. Geraldo Rivera, A Special Kind of Courage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976. Edith Pendleton, ed. Too Old to Cry, Too Young to Die. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980. Mary A. Kjosness and Laura A. Rudolph, What Happened to You Happened to Me. Seattle: Children's Orthopedic Hospital and Medical Center, 1980. Lori Wiener, This Is My World (workbook). Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America, 1999. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars. Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember. [http://chemo.starlight.org] References for Librarians Visual Presentation (Appropriateness) Wanting to be independent, teens often turn to the internet seeking answers to their most personal problems; therefore, the Coping with Chemo resource is a great tool for them to come across on the internet. In a recent study, researchers examined adolescents searching for heath information on the internet. The study found that adolescents searching for health information utilized search engines nearly every time (Hansen, et al, 2003). This shows the importance of the Coping with Chemo name as it is more likely to “pop up” while teenagers are typing in their own search strings. While teenagers are going through this psychological change, they feel that others are obsessed with the teen’s behavior and appearance as well. More specifically, in “actual or impeding social situations,” teenagers will often anticipate what other people’s reactions will be towards them as they, the teen, are towards themselves. The imaginary audience is “a continuous construction in the mind of an adolescent” (Elkins, 1967, p.1029). Although it is usually not the case, teenagers believe they are under a constant microscope and they are the focus of attention. When information professionals understand the teens need to not feel different (as they often worry about this more than death itself), they can better treat and help teens with coping. Blum, R. W., Garell, D., Hodgman, C. H., Jorissen, T. W., Okinow, N. A., Orr, D. P., & Slap, G. B. (1993). Transition from child-centered to adult health-care systems for adolescents with chronic conditions: a position paper of the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health, 14(7), 570-576. Elkind, D. (1967). Egocentrism in adolescence. Child development, 1025-1034. Hansen, D. L., Derry, H. A., Resnick, P. J., & Richardson, C. R. (2003). Adolescents searching for health information on the Internet: an observational study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 5(4). Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self- image (p. 326). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shaffer, D., & Kipp, K. (2013). Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence. Cengage Learning. Wallace, M. L., Harcourt, D., Rumsey, N., & Foot, A. (2007). Managing appearance changes resulting from cancer treatment: resilience in adolescent females. Psycho‐ Oncology, 16(11) 1019-1027.