(November 5, 2009) — An average teenage girl’s life isn’t complete without her first car. Longing for a car is one thing, but knowing more about the car bumper to bumper can come in handy. What a girl wouldn’t know about cars is covered in the easy to read, lightweight handbook of Erika Stalder, In the Driver’s Seat: A Girl’s Guide to Her First Car . The book is filled with information from dealing with oil and tire changes to picking the first car and getting insurance. There are sidebar stories of historical facts about females who invented turn signals and windshield wipers, important must-haves in the car and how to prepare in case of a breakdown. The average teenage, both females and some males, can enjoy the girl lingo about the comparison of vehicles to Sephora or a bad report card. A majority of the chapters deals with finding the right person to get insurance from and what steps a girl with a smart-budget should take in order to find the best deal. Although the book is meant to inform adolescent females about the essentials of driving, I find some parts too informative. There are step-by-step procedures to how a girl should have the height of the backseat reach her shoulders or how to open the hood by looking for the lever “somewhere below the steering wheel on the left.” I’m sure most girls in this century know how to open a hood of a car. Stalder tends to write throughout the book about how this is all about “car smarts” and getting “street cred” —getting props from friends. However, the book itself isn’t entirely smart. Not all girls need to know how to pop up the hood nor do they need to learn how to seat correctly in the driver’s seat. Knowing how to change the brake fluids, replace tires, and find the appropriate vehicles are all essential topics no doubt. This book, though, at times seems to give girls less credit about their knowledge of a car, nourishing the condescension males have towards female drivers. However, I do recommend this driving guide for females who want to know about all the different parts of the vehicle or who are clueless about how a car works. Some readers may enjoy the humor of the book and find it useful, but I give this book a 3 out of 5.