It's Perfectly Normal: A Book about Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (Family Library) (Paperback)

As the editor of It's Perfectly Normal, I would like to defend and support the book in the face of Customer Comments on your page from Westtown, Pennsylvania depicting it as "an explicit, often vulgar, discussion of sex."

In 1992 when the manuscript of It's Perfectly Normal first came to me at Candlewick, I felt immediately that is was an extraordinary piece of work. The entire text and artwork eloquently reflected Robie H. Harris's and Michael Emberley's commitment to the health and safety of young people. The research for the book has been extensive and impeccable, and in fact Robie and Michael continued to interview experts in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, child development, education, and parenting the entire time they worked on it with me and up until its publication.

Before committing Candlewick to publishing It's Perfectly Normal, I looked at many other books on sex education that had been published since the 1970s. It was clear to me that It's Perfectly Normal was badly needed for young people coming of age in the 1990s. It dealt with subjects of immediate importance and concern to pre-teens and teenagers in a remarkably accurate, thorough, balanced, and honest way.

When the book was published, it received starred reviews from such publications as School Library Journal, The Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, and Booklist (also featured on your page, thank you). It won many awards, including an American Library Association Notable Book, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book for a non-fiction. And yet the very qualities that distinguish It's Perfectly Normal -- the nature of its subject matter and the thoroughness and honesty of its approach have also meant that the book has been challenged.

Teachers, librarians and booksellers have been forced to defend It's Perfectly Normal, making certain that it is available to young people who are seeking it or who are in need of the information it contains. Pressure from members of a community -- or even from one member of a community -- who believe this information, should not be accessible to young people can make the teacher's or librarian's attempts to keep the book on their shelves uncomfortable or worse. And yet access to information is a right that must clearly be protected in a free society.

We at Candlewick Press applaud the perseverance and dedication of those who must fight to make certain that books like It's Perfectly Normal remain on their shelves or within their collections. We will do everything we can to assist them. Please feel free to circulate this letter and to call on us if we can be of further help.

Sincerely,

Amy Ehrlich --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.