As the mother of two teenagers, I promote reading, but I also believe parents should know what their kids are experiencing in the literary world. I wouldn't prevent my kids from reading this book, and I recommend that parents give it a chance.

It's Charlie's first year of high school. It's 1991, and his friend has killed himself. The 15-year-old has anxiety attacks. He tries to stop them but can't always do it. He tells his story in letter form, to a friend he does not know.

He makes friends with some older kids, and from this safety net he observes life and starts to find out who he is. And in bits and pieces, through the letters, the reader finds out, too.

Does Charlie experience living or is he more like a shadow on the wall?

While growing up in the suburbs, Charlie doesn't lead a sheltered life. He witnesses explicit sex, domestic abuse, drugs and alcohol.

He also witnesses heartbreak, confusion, deception and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

He is a giving, loving friend who is selfless to a fault. But is he on the receiving end of those things?

He has a teacher, Bill, who gives Charlie extra books to read and essays to write. The books have mostly young protagonists who learn lessons about life. Charlie can relate.

His writing and analytical thinking improves, his letter-writing continues, and sometimes he hides in his reading, away from the world. Charlie pulls into himself so much that he needs professional help.

He is hospitalized and starts seeing a psychiatrist who asks Charlie about his earliest memories. There must be a reason.

The voice of Charlie is precisely right as a 15- to 16-year-old boy. His letters don't offer flowery details but let the reader see Charlie's world as he does. Some are written in scattered, drug- or alcohol-influenced language, others in stone-cold sober sadness.

Charlie's is the only perspective in the book, so the reader isn't fully aware of what his friends and family members understand about him. His truth is revealed to the reader and to himself at the same time.

Chbosky is a talented writer who has taken teen angst and inner conflict and ripped the proverbial cover away to bare it all. He presents a coming-of-age tale with a depth of raw emotion.

Adult readers will look back at their own teen years while readers Charlie's age will see themselves. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" depicts the moment in life when we learn to be proactive rather than reactive, passionate rather than reflexive, and how someone who has gone through a trauma can still do that. And if Charlie can, we all can.

This book is a gem, an uncut, unset, priceless, precious stone. It's a book that, as Charlie's teacher tells him of a classic, is "very easy to read, but very hard to read well."