The Books About Sex That Every Family Should Read
nytimes.comTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. About eight years ago, when my daughter was in preschool, I went to the children’s alcove of ourlocal library and found the book that I’d heard was the standard-bearer of liberal sex education for younger school-age children: “It’s So Amazing!
A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families,” by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley. My daughter had so far only thrown me some softballs about pregnancy and babies, but it probably wouldn’t be long — billboards in Los Angeles being what they were — before I was fielding questions about sexuality. “It’s So Amazing!” covered many subjects: anatomy, gender, fertilization, gestation, birth, love, heterosexual intercourse, sexual orientation, child sex abuse and H.I.V.
Light on gender difference, open to gender fluidity and self-determination, it looked like a reasonably sound compendium of current thought.
A graphic of a boy and girl had arrows pointing to most parts of their bodies reading “same” and only one set of arrows pointing at their reproductive organs reading “different.” Our reproductive systems may divide us, the book suggested, but let’s not lose sight of all that we have in common — such as our circulatory, digestive and lymphatic systems.
