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It's So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families
by Michael Emberley, Robie Harris
Book review:
From Publishers Weekly
The creators of It's Perfectly Normal, targeted to middle-schoolers, here reach
out to a slightly younger audience with candor and humor, neatly distilling
various aspects of sex, reproduction and love. An inquisitive, loquacious bird
and an embarrassed bee act as comic and straight man and serve as diverting
foils to Harris's conversational narrative; kids will both identify with and
chuckle at the two characters' reactions and asides. The duo's cheerful banter
also clarifies some potentially confusing issues ("So the fetus doesn't grow
where the pizza goes!" proclaims the newly enlightened bee). Specific topics
covered include changes in boys' and girls' bodies during puberty, intercourse,
birth control, chromosomes and genes, adoption and adjusting to a newborn
sibling. The roster of experts in the closing acknowledgments speaks to the
sensitivity and intelligence with which Harris and Emberley handle their
treatment of masturbation, sexual abuse, HIV and AIDS and homosexuality.
Emberley's artwork ranges from lighthearted cartoon panels of a talking sperm
meeting up with an egg in the fallopian tube to straightforward drawings of
reproductive organs and a developing fetus. With its informal yet informed
perspective, this volume renders much "amazing" phenomena reassuringly
comprehensible. Ages 7-up. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 4-Another barrier-breaking contribution by Harris and
Emberley that seamlessly bridges It's Perfectly Normal (1994) and Happy Birth
Day! (1996, both Candlewick). This oversized, attractive guide on reproduction
and birth answers common questions such as "Exactly what is sex?" and "Where
does the baby actually come out?" The familiar enthusiastic bird and reluctant
bee narrate the comic cartoon panels, eventually deciding that the miracles of
birth, families, and love are just "so amazing." Readers will appreciate the
life-size illustration of a full-term fetus, and adults will be grateful for the
many different ways Emberley portrays situations not always easy to explain to
children. People are represented with a variety of body shapes and ethnicity,
and Harris discusses sexual preferences and alternative family situations. While
the illustrations are engaging and often hilarious, factual information is
effectively presented in a clear, nonjudgmental tone that will inform and assure
readers. Topics covered include basic anatomy, conception, fetal development,
birth, genetics, adoption, and love. Sexual abuse and HIV are sensitively
mentioned in short, informative chapters. An essential guide that will delight
and inform and appeal to young readers as well as adults.
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What's Going on Down There: Answers to Questions Boys Find Hard to Ask
by Karen Gravelle, Nick Castro,
Chava Castro, Robert Leighton, Walker & Co "The things that make a person male
or female have to do with reproduction, or having children..." (more)
Book review:
"From School Library Journal
Grade 5-10-The author of The Period Book (Walker, 1996) teams up with two
teenage consultants to provide a useful and readable guide to puberty for boys.
Written in the voice of a trusted adult, this title deftly covers physical
changes, sexual intercourse, peer pressure, and pregnancy and birth. Gravelle
reassures readers that there are a lot of different ways to describe normal when
discussing puberty, and that each person will experience changes on his own
timetable. The book balances information about being a sexual person with that
of being a responsible person. While providing detailed and accurate information
on genital size, birth-control devices, and sexually transmitted diseases, there
is also an emphasis on the psychological changes occurring at the same time.
Homosexuality and bisexuality are covered in a frank and open manner. The
chapter "Girls Are Changing Too" discusses changes readers can expect to see in
their female friends and has detailed illustrations and information not
typically presented in books for males. The text is complemented by comic-book
style illustrations that serve to lighten the sometimes serious subject matter.
Katie O'Dell Madison, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Aided by two teenagers, Gravelle does for boys what she and her daughter did for
girls in The Period Book (1996). As in the first book, the tone here is
forthright without being sober or scary. Facts about puberty, sex, and sexually
transmitted diseases, and also what happens to girls during puberty are
presented clearly and completely, along with answers to an assortment of related
questions. The authors also manage to slip in some counsel about wise decision
making, though the emphasis is on information, not values. This is similar in
scope to Paulette Bourgeois and Martin Wolfish's Changes in You & Me: A Book
about Puberty, Mostly in Boys (1994), but it is much more thorough and contains
a very detailed chapter on types of birth control, which Bourgeois and Wolfish
barely mention. Teens looking for information about homosexuality will probably
need to go elsewhere--to one of Thomas Ford's excellent books, perhaps--for a
better discussion. Otherwise, this is a fine book, with lots of great cartoon
artwork that adds fine comedy without compromising the importance of the
subject. Stephanie Zvirin--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. |
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Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States
by Janice M. Irvine
Editorial Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly
"Conservatives have dominated the public conversation about sexuality
education," declares sociologist Irvine (Disorders of Desire) in this closely
observed analysis of the evolution of such dominance. She first focuses on
SIECUS, the liberal Sex Information and Education Council of the United States,
which promoted sex education in the 1960s; within a decade, the emerging
Christian Right was publicly opposing sex ed. During the 1980s, however, the
far-reaching Adolescent Family Life Act passed without debate liberals saw it as
a tradeoff to protect social programs and enshrined a new tactic: sex education,
but for abstinence and against abortion. The subsequent network of sex education
providers, pregnancy crisis centers and "ex-gay" ministries has led to what
Irvine calls "major institutionalization of evangelical sexual morality as
public policy." She also indicates how conservatives have both distorted what
actually happens in sex ed and seized on dubious studies to argue, for example,
against condoms. Using more postmodern tactics, conservatives have appropriated
the language of both feminists and critical race theorists, Irvine says, to
argue that simply talking about sex in a sex education class can be abusive. Her
dismaying conclusion: conservatives may not have won the culture wars, but they
have won on this front, as few students receive the type of comprehensive sex ed
that SIECUS advocated. Pointing out that the broader culture is far more sexual
than acknowledged in the curriculum, Irvine analytically urges an effort to
define childhood so that innocence and protection do not automatically mean sex
talk is off-limits.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Description:
In this lively book, Janice M. Irvine offers not only the first comprehensive
history of the culture wars over sex education but also an important examination
of the politics of sexual speech in the United States. Exploring the clash
between professional sex education advocates on the one hand and the politicized
Christian Right on the other, Irvine vividly demonstrates the crucial role that
sexual speech plays in cultural politics. Examining a range of issues played out
in living rooms and schools since the 1960s, she shows how a newly emerging
Christian Right chose sex education as one of its first battlegrounds, then went
on to dominate the public conversation on the subject. Talk about Sex is a rich
and fascinating consideration of American sex education's strategic place in the
long history of efforts to regulate sexual morality by controlling sexual
speech. Irvine's original argument shows how sex education served as a bridge
issue between the Old Right and the New Right. Exploring the political uses of
emotion as it relates to sexuality, Irvine demonstrates how this movement draws
on the tenacious power of sexual shame and fear in order to galvanize opposition
to sex education. This book skillfully demonstrates how-by framing sex education
as radical, dangerous, and immoral-the Right has fostered a climate in which it
is risky, as former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders found, to speak out in
support of sexuality education.
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All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters
by Karen Stabiner "THERE WAS SO MUCH BRAVADO: SENIORS RULE
chalked on the driveway, red and white crepe paper draped in the trees, a
sprinkler shaped like an..." (more)
Book Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Stabiner (To Dance with the Devil: The New War on Breast Cancer)
turns her incisive reporting skills to life at two girls' schools in this paean
to single-sex education. She spent a year observing students at Marlborough, an
elite Los Angeles prep school, and at The Young Women's Leadership School (TYWLS),
a public school in East Harlem. Alternating chapters between the schools,
Stabiner traces the aspirations and accomplishments of the girls and their
teachers. Painting a vivid picture of the students' lives, the book seems at
times more like a novel than nonfiction, with a cast of over 22 characters.
Stabiner resists imbuing the text with her own opinions, and she explains that
if she has included her subjects' feelings or private thoughts it's because
"they told me about them." As a strong "show, don't tell" writer, she lets
readers learn through classroom scenarios, showing, for instance, that it can be
trying for teachers to get adolescent girls to speak up in class, yet by the end
of the year, many have gained the confidence to speak out and to concentrate on
honing their brain power rather than their popularity. Stabiner does not include
a progressive co-ed school for purposes of comparison, thus readers may feel
that the jury is still out on single-sex education. Her fly-on-the-wall method
is effective, and parents wondering what an all-girls school is really like will
learn much from her observations. Those seeking practical tips, however, won't
find them here.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of
print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description:
Investigative journalist Karen Stabiner spent pivotal years with the young
women of two very different girls' schools: Marlborough, an elite prep school in
Los Angeles, and The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, an
experimental public school. On both coasts, her subjects are fascinating young
women on the brink of adulthood, whose choices will affect their lives.
Even-handed and thought-provoking, All Girls could change the way we educate all
children in the future. |
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Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting
Children from Sex
by Judith Levine, Joycelyn M. Elders "At the turn of the
twenty-first century, America is being inundated by censorship in the name of
protecting "children" from "sex," both terms capaciously defined..." (more)
Book Description:
Sex is a wonderful, crucial part of growing up, and children and teens can enjoy
the pleasures of the body and be safe, too. In this important and controversial
book, Judith Levine makes this argument and goes further, asserting that
America's attempts to protect children from sex are worse than ineffectual. It
is the assumption of danger and the exclusive focus on protection-what Levine
terms "the sexual politics of fear"-that are themselves harmful to minors.
Through interviews with young people and their parents, stories drawn from
today's headlines, visits to classrooms and clinics, and a look back at the ways
sex among children and teenagers has been viewed throughout history, Judith
Levine debunks some of the dominant myths of our society. She examines and
challenges widespread anxieties (pedophilia, stranger kidnapping, Internet
pornography) and sacred cows (abstinence-based sex education, statutory rape
laws). Levine investigates the policies and practices that affect kids' sex
lives-censorship, psychology, sex and AIDS education, family, criminal, and
reproductive law, and the journalism that begs for "solutions" while inciting
more fear.
Harmful to Minors offers fresh alternatives to fear and silence, describing
sex-positive approaches that are ethically based and focus on common sense.
Levine provides optimistic, though realistic, prescriptions for how we might do
better in guiding children toward loving well-that is, safely, pleasurably, and
with respect for others and themselves.
Judith Levine is a journalist, essayist, and author who has written about sex,
gender, and families for two decades. Her articles appear regularly in national
publications, most recently Ms., nerve.com, and My Generation. An activist for
free speech and sex education, Levine is a founder of the feminist group No More
Nice Girls and the National Writers Union. She is the author of My Enemy, My
Love: Women, Men, and the Dilemmas of Gender (1992), and lives in Brooklyn, New
York, and Hardwick, Vermont. |
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Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the
20th Century
by Jeffrey P. Moran
Book description:
Sex education, since its advent at the dawn of the twentieth century, has
provoked the hopes and fears of generations of parents, educators, politicians,
and reformers. On its success or failure seems to hinge the moral fate of the
nation and its future citizens. But whether we argue over condom distribution to
teenagers or the use of an anti-abortion curriculum in high schools, we rarely
question the basic premise--that adolescents need to be educated about sex. How
did we come to expect the public schools to manage our children's sexuality?
More important, what is it about the adolescent that arouses so much anxiety
among adults? Teaching Sex travels back over the past century to trace the
emergence of the "sexual adolescent" and the evolution of the schools' efforts
to teach sex to this captive pupil. Jeffrey Moran takes us on a fascinating ride
through America's sexual mores: from a time when young men were warned about the
crippling effects of masturbation, to the belief that schools could and should
train adolescents in proper courtship and parenting techniques, to the
reemergence of sexual abstention brought by the AIDS crisis. We see how the
political and moral anxieties of each era found their way into sex education
curricula, reflecting the priorities of the elders more than the concerns of the
young. Moran illuminates the aspirations and limits of sex education and the
ability of public authority to shape private behavior. More than a critique of
public health policy, Teaching Sex is a broad cultural inquiry into America's
understanding of adolescence, sexual morality, and social reform.--This text
refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
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Sex Education Activities (Just for the Health of
It!, Unit 4)
by Patricia Rizzo Toner
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