Dr. Gail Saltz lives in New York City. Lynne Cravath lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Amazing You! Getting Smart About Your Private Parts by Dr. Gail Saltz, illus. by Lynne Cravath, begins with a note to parents, then asks young readers to "Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?" Beginning with "Head, arms, hand, legs, and feet," the narrative then progresses to "private parts," calling them by their nicknames and then getting serious about the function of the uterus and penis-tactfully skirting details about intercourse ("When a man and a woman love each other and decide that they want to make a baby, a man's sperm joins with a woman's egg"). Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
PreS-Gr 1-This title tackles basic body awareness and sex education. The text speaks directly to young children, differentiating between body parts that are visible most of the time and those that are kept hidden, showing the differences between girls and boys and offering a simple explanation of how babies are made without explicit reference to sex. Cravath's sunny cartoons show the various parts in a straightforward manner, though preschoolers may be confused about where the internal ones are. The text also uses terms such as "vagina" and "urinate" without actually explaining what they mean, and, curiously, the text does not discuss breasts at all, though there are side-by-side illustrations of a boy and girl in the baby, preschool, and adult stages. An author's note advises parents on the finer points of discussing these delicate issues. Though Laurie Krasny Brown's What's the Big Secret?: Talking about Sex with Girls and Boys (Little, Brown, 1997) remains the gold standard for sex ed for young children, this book is a friendly supplement or a nice starter for parents who aren't quite ready to go into the detail provided in Brown's book.-Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Maryland School for the Deaf, Columbia Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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