By Babette Cole
In this book, a young girl asks her teddy bear, Ted, "when will I grow up to be a grown up?" Ted explains, "That depends on Mr. and Mrs. Hormone. They are in charge of growing up." He goes on to explain hormones and how they change the human body. His descriptions are accompanied by humerous, if somewhat risque, descriptions and illustrations. In fact, the illustrations in this book include nude drawings of both a male and a female, so reading this book with your children is not for the light-of-heart.
I found this book to be humorous and educational (it is classified as non-fiction), but I have trouble imagining myself reading it to a classroom full of giggling and blushing students. And even though this book is rated "ages 7 and up," I especially can't imagine reading it to a classroom full of giggling and blushing first or second graders. On one hand, it's kind of a shame that things like that are taboo in our society. On the other hand, I can see how parents might get upset about illustrations of a naked pubescent boy and girl. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned or conservative about that sort of thing, but if you're reading this book with young children, I would recommend it happens in the home and not in the classroom. That way, parents can tell their children all the facts and include or avoid as many illustrations as they want.
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Mary -
ReplyDeleteHa! What an interesting approach this author took in introducing "puberty." I'm wondering, "what in the world are we going to do, as teachers, if these taboo topics just happen to surface in the classroom?" Perhaps you're right, this book may not be the best way to address the issue... maybe we're both "CONSERVATIVES" (I laugh as I type this...). At any rate, I agree that reading the book in the home environment rather than school is probably best; but either way they learn it, it's "looming in the shadows" and waiting to pop up as a topic of discussion among children in school. Yikes!
I agree with you that this book might not be something that I read in my classroom unless we were discussing puberty and such in a "sex ed" type class. I have not read this book but because of its humorous approach to explain a sometimes taboo subject for children I feel like it might work well in the older grades, but definitely while talking about this subject. I wouldn't just have it out throughout the year necessarily. It would however be a possible book to suggest to parents who might struggle with talking about thie subject with their children.
ReplyDeleteI think it's tough to find a balance between sex ed and humor. While I don't think we need to be so tight-lipped that we can't talk about it, it's just hard to know when the right age to use this book would be. I'm with you in that I would balk at trying to read this to my class. I worry that there would be too much laughing, but I'm glad to hear that there was good content in the book.
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