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

[semperfiona]

I got both of the later two for Rosa, as she neared the target age groups, and have been very pleased with them. The last one in particular also acknowledges that the kid *reading* the book may be LGB (again, not so much with the T, unfortunately).

[moominmuppet]

Very handy to know; thanks!

[redbird]

That book does sound useful. (I may want to point a couple of people at this review, in fact; I have no direct responsibility for children, but my extended family-of-choice includes a six-year-old.)

One minor point on the math, but a lot of people seem to miss this: when about 1/80 pregnancies produce twins, about 2/81 or approximately 1/40 children will be twins. (Similarly, 3/6400 or approximately 1/2135 newborns will be triplets.)

[moominmuppet]

Absolutely feel free to share! My goal is basically to find little ways to encourage people to have healthy conversations with kids from the get-go, which is why I write things like this and hope they'll get passed along as encouragement and direction.

[moominmuppet]

Also, good catch on the math! Noting that in my edit of the post!

[shehasathree]

Thanks so much for sharing this review, it sounds amazing (pity about the grips though). Things have come a long way since Where Did I Come From? (was my favourite book when i was three! embarrassed grandparents by asking them to read it to me. :D)

[moominmuppet]

Oh, I loved that one too! We had it in my fourth grade class. The book we had at home was lovely too. Very 70s, all illustrated with paintings. I still have it and should scan it in, since it's out-of-print and out-of-date but a fascinating curiousity.

[lunatickle]

I am totally getting this book!!!! Parts I love especially: masturbation is an ok touch, all kinds of families, kids are much too young for sex, the anatomical accuracy...thanks for writing this review

[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

awesome

[leveldeaded]

That's great!!

I'm getting this for my lover, seems ideal for his 4 and 6 year-old!
I've been doing some work with people with developmental disabilities and sex ed and talking with parents about how to discuss things like masturbation with them. Very Important stuff!!!

Re: awesome

[moominmuppet]

Oh, yay! Glad it's helpful!

In terms of discussing masturbation, I was talking last night to Grafton and our friend Megan about that, and how my family handled it, which I thought was an excellent and non-shaming approach.

We were never scolded or told it was bad or dirty or not to do it, we were just told "that's something you do in private". It clarified the appropriate boundary for us without giving us a falsely negative impression of the act itself.

Re: awesome

[leveldeaded]

Exactly - and one thing we have to be careful about with kids who have slightly different perceptions of reality is that they benefit from extra guidance with things like whom you can ask questions about "the shaking penis" and when it's okay to touch another person, and exactly what "Privacy" means when other people need to use a bathroom or when someone is too close in earshot.

I think it's a huge start just to be more comfortable talking about sex and body parts than most of my parents' generation was.