It's So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families (The Family Library) - Hardcover

Harris, Robie H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763600512 ISBN 13: 9780763600518

Publisher: Candlewick, 1999

Synopsis

With honesty, accuracy, humor, and warmth, IT'S SO AMAZING offers children the real information they need—now more than ever.

How does a baby begin? What makes a baby female or male? Why are some babies twins? How is a baby adopted? Children sure have lots of questions about reproduction and babies—and about sex and sexuality too.

IT'S SO AMAZING! provides the fascinating answers—with fun, accurate, comic-book style artwork, and a clear, lively text that reflects an elementary-school child's interest in science and how things work. Throughout the book, a curious Bird and a squeamish Bee help tell the AMAZING story of how a baby is made—from the moment an egg and sperm join, through pregnancy, to birth. IT'S SO AMAZING! also addresses, in a reassuring and age-appropriate way, related topics such as love, sex, gender, families, heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexual abuse, and HIV and AIDS—while giving children a healthy understanding of their bodies.

Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley, author and illustrator of IT'S PERFECTLY NORMAL: CHANGING BODIES, GROWING UP, SEX AND SEXUAL HEALTH, created IT'S SO AMAZING! in response to requests from parents, educators, librarians, and health professionals for a book that would address a younger child's concerns. Vetted and approved by science, health, and child development experts, this comprehensive, forthright, and funny book is just what children need—to provide answers to their questions and to keep them safe, healthy, and unafraid.

About this title

About the Author

Robie H. Harris says, "My challenge in writing IT'S SO AMAZING! was to weave the fascinating and complicated science facts about reproduction and birth into the story of the egg and the sperm, and to communicate to children in an honest and simple way how amazing this story really is!"


Michael Emberley says that while creating the illustrations for IT'S SO AMAZING!, he "tried to delicately balance age-appropriateness, absolute accuracy, honesty, and just plain fun."

Reviews

Talking to children about where babies come from can be difficult¾on the parents and on the kids. But It's So Amazing might make it a little easier. Give it to your child to read or better yet, sit down and read it together. Interesting discussions are sure to follow. Written in comic-book style, this book addresses many topics, including conception, birth, love, sexuality and family, in a gentle and respectful manner. In the chapter "Becoming a Family," for example, a variety of families are mentioned, including those headed by a single parent, by parents who are gay or straight, and by parents who are married or divorced. Illustrations help validate each combination as a real and loving family. In a direct and nonthreatening manner, Harris discusses cesarean births, premature babies, adoption, sexual abuse, and HIV and AIDS. Colorful drawings depict people of different cultures, races, shapes and sizes. An eager-to-learn bird and a more reticent bee serve as an audience within the book. They ask questions, make comments and learn along with the reader. Offering comic relief throughout, they also help readers recognize that not everyone shares the same comfort level discussing these issues and that however one feels is okay. This is a book you'll wish someone had given you as a child.

Joan Silberlicht Epstein

Harris and Emberley fill the gap between their picture book, Happy Birth Day (1996), and the instant-classic It's Perfectly Normal (1994) with this equally sensitive, good-humored take on love and sex, puberty, genetics, pregnancy, and related topics, from sibling rivalry to HIV. Emberley supplies side (and snide) commentary from an eager bird and a reluctant bee to go along with cartoon depictions of anatomical details, human figures in a marvelous variety of ages, shapes, and skin colors, and a dramatic sequence covering fetal development from one month to nine in actual size. Never talking down to readers, Harris takes wide-angled views of sexual preferences, birth control, and the meaning of ``family,'' while making the terminology less forbidding by mixing it with familiar comparisons: ``The epididymis is a long, twisty, coiled tube. It is shaped somewhat like a telephone receiver, but smaller.'' The collaborators expertly walk the line between frankness and bluntness, keeping the actual sex act under the covers, and nimbly explaining how abuse differs from normal human contact and affection. Closing on a cheery note with a look at new baby customs in several parts of the world, this provides sensible, reassuring answers to readers' questions and concerns, and interrupts the rain of information with occasional silliness. (index) (Nonfiction. 8-10) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kindergarten-Grade 4-Another barrier-breaking contribution by Harris and Emberley that seamlessly bridges It's Perfectly Normal (1994) and Happy Birth Day! (1996, both Candlewick). This oversized, attractive guide on reproduction and birth answers common questions such as "Exactly what is sex?" and "Where does the baby actually come out?" The familiar enthusiastic bird and reluctant bee narrate the comic cartoon panels, eventually deciding that the miracles of birth, families, and love are just "so amazing." Readers will appreciate the life-size illustration of a full-term fetus, and adults will be grateful for the many different ways Emberley portrays situations not always easy to explain to children. People are represented with a variety of body shapes and ethnicity, and Harris discusses sexual preferences and alternative family situations. While the illustrations are engaging and often hilarious, factual information is effectively presented in a clear, nonjudgmental tone that will inform and assure readers. Topics covered include basic anatomy, conception, fetal development, birth, genetics, adoption, and love. Sexual abuse and HIV are sensitively mentioned in short, informative chapters. An essential guide that will delight and inform and appeal to young readers as well as adults.
Katie O'Dell, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The creators of It's Perfectly Normal, targeted to middle-schoolers, here reach out to a slightly younger audience with candor and humor, neatly distilling various aspects of sex, reproduction and love. An inquisitive, loquacious bird and an embarrassed bee act as comic and straight man and serve as diverting foils to Harris's conversational narrative; kids will both identify with and chuckle at the two characters' reactions and asides. The duo's cheerful banter also clarifies some potentially confusing issues ("So the fetus doesn't grow where the pizza goes!" proclaims the newly enlightened bee). Specific topics covered include changes in boys' and girls' bodies during puberty, intercourse, birth control, chromosomes and genes, adoption and adjusting to a newborn sibling. The roster of experts in the closing acknowledgments speaks to the sensitivity and intelligence with which Harris and Emberley handle their treatment of masturbation, sexual abuse, HIV and AIDS and homosexuality. Emberley's artwork ranges from lighthearted cartoon panels of a talking sperm meeting up with an egg in the fallopian tube to straightforward drawings of reproductive organs and a developing fetus. With its informal yet informed perspective, this volume renders much "amazing" phenomena reassuringly comprehensible. Ages 7-up. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author and illustrator duo that broke new ground with their frank talk and depiction of puberty and changing bodies in It's Perfectly Normal, (1994) returns with an equally outstanding book. It's for children who may have "noticed kids who are going through puberty" but are not there themselves and have questions about sex and "where babies come from." The simple and straightforward prose focuses on reproduction and birth, including information on eggs, sperm, male and female body parts, the multiple meanings of sex, fetal development and delivery, family composition, and "okay touches" and "not okay touches." Related issues such as puberty, sexual orientation, birth control, and AIDS receive less detailed attention. The text is browser friendly; important information and reassuring words are repeated. Harris is also very good at recognizing children's misconceptions and teams up with Emberley to address myths in humorous ways: one illustration clears up the confusion over where the pizza goes (in the mother's stomach) and where the baby grows (in the uterus, or womb). The inquisitive bird and the embarrassed bee of the first book are back, but in more prominent roles as commentators, word definers and pronouncers, and official punsters. The bold, colorful illustrations fill the pages and are not as graphic as in the previous book. With the exception of two pages showing male and female bodies from infancy to older adulthood, examples feature clothed children and adults, and comic-strip art chronicles the amazing adventures of egg and sperm. A welcome book that meets the needs of those in-between or curious kids who are not ready, developmentally or emotionally, for It's Perfectly Normal. Amy Brandt

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0763600512
• ISBN 13: 9780763600518
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Emberley Michael
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80