Kids' Book Review: It's Not The Stork! A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies... (Ages 4-up)

[moominmuppet]

Updated with minor revisions, corrections, and expansions on 4/15/12. For anyone who doesn't know me, my perspective in evaluating books like this is largely informed by being a queer feminist sexuality educator* and reproductive rights activist with an interest in intersectionalityMy reviews are probably most useful for parents and other adults

Comments

[moominmuppet]

I've been rather struggling with that as well. On the one hand, in an ideal world (and the world I want to encourage by example), books explaining bodies wouldn't be any different than books explaining anything else about the world, and it wouldn't be this separate taboo arena of information. So my desire is to hand them out like I would anything else, and answer questions as directly as I would anything else. In actuality, though, I tend to take a more conservative approach, because parents' trust that I won't disrespect that their boundaries and comfort level might be different than mine is more important and helpful in the long run. For example, I'm not giving this book directly to Kidlet, I've sent it home with Chad to talk about with Kidlet's Mom first. I don't want to seem to usurp rights to make that decision, although I've certainly explained to Chad why I think it's a beneficial book, and suggested that he and Kidlet's mom make a mutual decision about when they're comfortable adding it to his bookshelf. It's also part of why I'm so detailed in this review -- everyone knows I'm a flaming leftist hippy activist-type. If I just say "hey, it's a great book" they're a bit justified in wondering what the hell I might be likely to recommend. So the clearer I am about exactly what's in it and isn't in it, the more easily I can allay some of those concerns that I'll be reccing "Basic BDSM principles for Pre-Teens" or something.