You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, and Other Things
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Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
2023 ALA RAINBOW BOOK LIST WINNER 2023 DOUG WRIGHT AWARD A completely new approach to learning about puberty, sex, and gender for kids 10+. Here is the much-anticipated third book in the trilogy that started with the award-winning What Makes a Baby and Sex Is a Funny Word "Silverberg's writing is fearless . . . Here is that rare voice that can talk about the hardest things kids go through in ways that are thoughtful, lighthearted and always respectful of their intelligence." —Rachel Brian, The New York Times Book Review In a bright graphic format featuring four dynamic middle schoolers, You Know, Sex grounds sex education in social justice, covering not only the big three of puberty—hormones, reproduction, and development—but also power, pleasure, and how to be a decent human being. Centering young people’s experiences of pressures and joy, risk and reward, and confusion and discovery, there are chapters on body autonomy, disclosure, stigma, harassment, pornography, trauma, masturbation, consent, boundaries and safety in our media-saturated world, puberty and reproduction that includes trans, non-binary, and intersex bodies and experience, and more. Racially and ethnically diverse, inclusive of cross-disability experience, this is a book for every kind of young person and every kind of family. You Know, Sex is the first thoroughly modern sex ed book for every body navigating puberty and adolesence, essential for kids, everyone who knows a kid, and anyone who has ever been a kid.
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Finally finished this book. I really enjoyed it and how informative it is, how it made good on its promise to showcase so many different body types, people, and lifestyles, and how it covered topics like consent and secret touch. Most of the sex education information out there tends to gloss over these subjects or cover them at the basic level, but here they were discussed in depth with the many different ways these things can present themselves. I also appreciated how the book described sex as not just doing naked stuff with yourself or other people, but all the acts of intimacy leading up to that. I think that did a great job of both demystifying sex a little bit to where it's not this big, scary thing, but also added a bit more importance to the everyday aspect of relationships and that even if everyone is fully clothed and nothing “sexy” is happening, it's still a precious thing to be allowed in someone's space and to have them trust you. The only reason it took me forever to finish this book is that it read like a textbook at times when the topics were more biology based, and I just prefer cohesive stories (like fantasy). Great book, very informative, and I highly recommend it to people of all ages because of the variety of perspectives shown. We could all benefit from hearing other people.
