MITCHELL, Joyce Slayton 1933-

PERSONAL: Born August 13, 1933, in Hardwick, VT; daughter of George Dix (an automobile dealer) and Sarah (Arkin) Slayton; married William E. Mitchell (an anthropologist), July 4, 1959; children: Edward Slayton, Elizabeth Dix. Education: Denison University, A.B., 1955; University of Bridgeport, M.S., 1958; Columbia University, further graduate study, 1960-62. Politics: Republican. Religion: Presbyterian. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, skiing, jogging, biking, studying French, theatre, movies, living in Paris every August.

ADDRESSES: Home—150 East 93rd St., New York, NY 10128.

CAREER: West Rocks Junior High School, Norwalk, CT, teacher of physical education, 1955-58; Amity Regional High School, Woodbridge, CT, counselor, 1958-59; Greenwich High School, Greenwich, CT, counselor, 1959-62; consultant in education, 1962—; author, 1965—. Visiting lecturer at Johnson State College, 1975. Member of advisory council of Harvard University's Divinity School, 1974-75.

MEMBER: American Personnel and Guidance Association (member of board of directors of Women's Caucus, 1976), National Vocational Guidance Association (professional member), American School Counselor Association, National Association of College Admissions Counselors, National Organization for Women (founder and coordinator of Vermont chapter, 1973-74), Vermont Guidance Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Books for the Teen Age selections, New York Public Library, 1980, for Free to Choose: Decision Making for Young Men, 1981, for Be a Mother and More: Career and Life Planning for Young Women, and 1982, for See Me More Clearly: Career and Life Planning for Teens with Physical Disabilities.

WRITINGS:

The Guide to College Life, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1968.

The Guide to Canadian Universities, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1970.

(Editor) Other Choices for Becoming a Woman: A Handbook to Help High School Women Make Decisions, Know, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA), 1974, revised edition, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1975.

I Can Be Anything: Careers and Colleges for Young Women, College Entrance Examination Board (New York, NY), 1975, 3rd edition, 1982.

(Editor) Free to Choose: Decision Making for Young Men, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1976.

Tokenism: The Opiate of the Oppressed, Know, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA), 1976.

Stopout!: Working Ways to Learn, Garrett Park Press(Garrett Park, MD), 1978.

The Work Book: A Guide to Skilled Jobs, Sterling Publishing (New York, NY), 1978.

The Classroom Teacher's Workbook for Career Education, Avon (New York, NY), 1979.

What's Where: The Official Guide to College Majors, Avon (New York, NY), 1979.

The Men's Career Book: Work and Life Planning for a New Age, Bantam (New York, NY), 1979.

See Me More Clearly: Career and Life Planning for Teens with Physical Disabilities, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1980.

Be a Mother and More: Career and Life Planning for Young Women, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Taking on the World: Empowering Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1982.

Choices and Changes: A Career Book for Men, College Entrance Examination Board (New York, NY), 1982.

Your Job in the Computer Age: The Complete Guide to the Computer Skills You Need to Get the Job You Want, Scribner (New York, NY), 1984.

College to Career: The Guide to Job Opportunities, College Entrance Examination Board (New York, NY), 1986, revised edition published as The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, College Entrance Examination Board (New York, NY), 1990, 2nd edition, 1994.

Making More Money: Fifty-five Special Job-Hunting Strategies for Retirees, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1986.

Winning the Chemo Battle, Norton (New York, NY), 1988.

The Best Guide to the Top Colleges: How to Get into the Ivy's or Nearly Ivy's, Garrett Park Press (Garrett Park, MD), 1991.

College Smarts: The Official Freshman Handbook, Garrett Park Press (Garrett Park, MD), 1991.

Mitchell Express: The Fast Track to the Top Colleges, Garrett Park Press (Garrett Park, MD), 1993.

(With daughter, Elizabeth Dix Mitchell) A Special Delivery: Mother-Daughter Letters from Afar, Equilibrium Press (Culver City, CA), 2000.

Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean: Experts Advice for Getting into College, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2001.

PICTURE BOOKS

My Mommy Makes Money, illustrated by True Kelly, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1984.

Tractor-Trailer Trucker: A Powerful Truck Book, illustrated by Steven Borns, Tricycle Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

Crashed, Smashed, and Mashed: A Trip to Junkyard Heaven, illustrated by Steven Borns, Tricycle Press (Berkeley, CA), 2001.

Knuckleboom Loaders Load Logs, illustrated by Steven Borns, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2003.

Contributor to education, counseling, and feminist journals, and to Seventeen. Contributor to N.O.W. Anthology, edited by Mordica Pollack, Know, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA), 1973. Member of editorial board of School Counselor, 1975-78.

SIDELIGHTS: Career counselor and educator Joyce Slayton Mitchell has devoted much of her career as a writer to counseling young adults in making intelligent college and career choices. Helping high school students make wise college selections has been one of her major goals, and she has published books such as 1991's The Best Guide to the Top Colleges: How to Get into the Ivy's or Nearly Ivy's and Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean: A Expert's Advice for Getting into College. Calling the latter book "a fine combination of solid advice and good sense," Booklist contributor Stephanie Zvirin also praised Mitchell's approach as "upbeat" and "well-organized." One of her most widely used books, The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning is published under the auspices of the highly respected College Entrance Examination Board, which runs the widely used Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) program.

Born in 1933, Mitchell grew up in a small town in northern New England and attended college in the Midwest. Earning her master's degree in 1958, she moved to Connecticut and worked as a school counselor before getting married and moving with her anthropologist-husband back to Vermont. "The only thing I could think to do was to write," she once recalled to CA of her period raising her family in a rural Vermont town. "To write about the questions students had when I was a counselor. 'What's it like in college?' 'What's it like in a city, in a village, in the suburbs?' 'What's it like to go to an intellectual college, a collegiate college, a business college, an artistic or community-centered college?' 'What's it like to be a banker? a promotion manager? a stockbroker? a computer graphics technician?' After all the surprises I got in college and working and marriage and motherhood, the main question I want to write about for young people is: 'What's it like?'"

Mitchell's The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, which was initially published in 1986 as College to Career: The Guide to Job Opportunities, is similar in content to the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook or OOH, in its discussion of the salary, educational and vocational requirements, and employment prospects for the one hundred most common jobs in the United States. However, Mitchell includes such things as the computer skills necessary for each job, the number of minorities and women in each field, and quotes regarding relative job satisfaction from men and women who have worked in each particular field five years or less. Dubbing Mitchell's job descriptions "peppy," Denise Perry Donavin noted in Booklist that The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning provides high school and college students "a good place to start, particularly since definitive instructions are given" for young people at a variety of educational levels. Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Elaine Mersol dubbed Mitchell's book a "smaller, friendlier version" of the government's OOH, and praised in particular the author's "emphasis on decision making by young adults."

Mitchell is keenly aware of the differences in the adult path followed by men and women, and consequently she has authored books organized along gender lines. Addressing the special concerns of young women—such as the so-called glass ceiling, whether to work and raise children, and when to start a family—are such books as I Can Be Anything: Careers and Colleges for Young Women, Other Choices for Becoming a Woman: A Handbook to Help High School Women Make Decisions, and Be a Mother and More: Career and Life Planning for Young Women. Noting the praise given Mitchell's books, Kliatt contributor Kathleen J. Bognanni commented that Be a Mother and More "continues her tradition of sensible advice."

Young men are given equal treatment by Mitchell in a sequence of books devoted to their unique career and lifestyle concerns. In 1976's Free to Choose: Decision Making for Young Men, the author prompts young men to view drug use, sex, and religion as lifestyle choices for which they can then take responsibility, and includes military service among the career choices available. Job descriptions serve as the bulk of The Men's Career Book: Work and Life Planning for a New Age, which includes advice to help men "avoid the cultural pressures to become . . . a person who is measured by his earning power," in the words of a Kliatt contributor. And in Choices and Changes: A Career Book for Men, both young men new to the job market and those seeking to change careers are helped through the in-depth overviews of numerous jobs. A Kliatt reviewer called Choices and Changes "a good starting place for a future job seeker," while in Booklist Stephanie Zvirin dubbed Mitchell's text "enthusiastic yet thoroughly realistic counsel," adding that the author "wastes no time getting to the point." As Mitchell once noted of her nonfiction guides: "As a feminist and an educator, my work all reflects the importance of decision-making on the basis of a student's abilities and interests rather than from a stereotypic expectation of what 'girls should do' or what 'boys should do.' My books are designed to help high school students understand the many choices open in developing all facets of their lives, so that they are not bound by traditional views of women and men."

In addition to her many works of nonfiction, Mitchell has also ventured into fiction writing with Crashed, Smashed, and Mashed: A Trip to Junkyard Heaven, a picture book using what a Kirkus Reviews critic termed "sharp, artfully angled" photographs by Steven Borns to introduce youngsters to the afterlife of broken-down or otherwise wrecked cars. A companion volume, Tractor-Trailer Trucker: A Powerful Truck Book, satisfies children's curiosity about the big rigs rolling along the nation's highways, and includes a guide to "trucker talk" and other facts that Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg maintained would "satisfy truck fanatics."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Reference Book Annual, 1980, Peggy Clossey Boone, review of The Men's Career Book: Work and Life Planning for a New Age, pp. 294-295, and Peggy Sullivan, review of The Work Book: A Guide to Skilled Jobs, p. 295; 1981, Leonard Grundt, review of What's Where? The Official Guide to College Majors, pp. 305-306; 1995, Christine E. King, review of Mitchell Express: The Fast Track to the Top Colleges, p. 166, and Barbara Conroy, review of The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, p. 173.

Booklist, January 1, 1977, review of Free to Choose: Decision Making for Young Men, p. 661; June 1, 1978, review of I Can Be Anything: Careers and Colleges for Young Women, pp. 1545-1546; June 1, 1979, review of The Men's Career Book, p. 1486; September 1, 1979, review of Stopout! Working Ways to Learn, p. 28; February 1, 1982, review of Taking on the World: Empowering Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities, p. 687; January 15, 1983, review of Choices and Changes: A Career Book for Men, p. 645; February 15, 1983, review of I Can Be Anything, p. 750; April 15, 1988, review of Winning the Chemo Battle, p. 1379; November 1, 1990, Denise Perry Donavin, review of The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, p. 486; April 1, 2000, Gillian Engberg, review of Tractor-Trailer Trucker: A Powerful Truck Book, p. 1459; March 15, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Crashed,Smashed, and Mashed: A Trip to Junkyard Heaven, p. 1399; August, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean: Experts Advice for Getting into College, p. 2059.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, December, 1980, review of See Me More Clearly: Career and Life Planning for Teens with Physical Disabilities, p. 76; June, 1984, review of My Mommy Makes Money, p. 189.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1976, review of Other Choices for Becoming a Woman: A Handbook to Help High School Women Make Decisions, and Free to Choose, p. 1229; July 1, 1980, review of See Me More Clearly, p. 843; March 1, 2001, review of Crashed, Smashed, and Mashed, p. 335. Kliatt, fall, 1979, review of The Men's Career Book, pp. 34-35; winter, 1979, review of I Can Be Anything, p. 34; winter, 1980, Elaine R. Goldberg, review of The Classroom Teacher's Workbook for Career Education, p. 36; spring, 1981, Kathleen J. Bognanni, review of Be a Mother and More: Career and Life Planning for Young Women, pp. 31-32; winter, 1983, review of Choices and Changes, p. 41, and I Can Be Anything, p. 42; January, 1991, Kathryn L. Harris, review of The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, p. 36; September, 1991, review of The Best Guide to the Top Colleges, pp. 42-43.

Library Journal, December 15, 1978, Stanley P. Lyle, review of The Work Book, p. 2515, and Barbara Green Ashdown, review of Stopout!, p. 2506; May 15, 1979, Stanley P. Lyle, review of The Men's Career Book, p. 1136; February 15, 1983, Barbara Carow, review of Choices and Changes, p. 394; November 15, 1986, Wendy Allex, review of College to Career, p. 92.

Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2000, review of Tractor-Trailer Trucker, p. 86; August 13, 2001, review of Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean, p. 305.

School Library Journal, November, 1975, Marlayne Morgan, review of I Can Be Anything, p. 98; December, 1976, Joan Scherer Brewer, review of Other Choices for Becoming a Woman, p. 62; January, 1977, Joan Scherer Brewer, review of Free to Choose, p. 103; February, 1979, Mickey Moskowitz, review of The Work Book, pp. 68-69; April, 1983, Deanna J. McDaniel, review of I Can Be Anything, p. 126; August, 1984, Audrey Conant, review of My Mommy Makes Money, p. 63; August, 2000, Edith Ching, review of Tractor-Trailer Trucker, pp. 172-173; June, 2001, Pamela K. Bomboy, review of Crashed, Smashed, and Mashed, p. 177; December, 2001, review of Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean, p. 168.

Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 1981, Deborah Grimes, review of See Me More Clearly, p. 46; February, 1985, Nancy Clark, review of Your Job in the Computer Age, p. 341; December, 1990, Elaine Mersol, review of The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, p. 317; October, 1994, Jennifer A. Long, review of The College Board Guide to Jobs and Career Planning, p. 245.*