Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My daughter turned ten a few weeks ago and I wanted to start preparing her for the eventuality of her period and other bodily changes. She is gifted and a straight A+ student but she's also a very young ten maturity-wise (thank God). She does not know how babies are made really. She still plays with horse toys and dragons and Harry Potter dolls etc. We have raised her to be accepting of people no matter their sexuality. We are liberal leaning even though we're also Catholic. She is obsessed with reading and because she's so smart, it's hard to find books as she gets older that are not about catty girls or romantic relationships in any kind of physical detail (Harry Potter has been the hardest one for us so far). So many of the books about a girl's body include discussions about boys and sex -- and eating disorders, fashion etc. I don't think girls need to be thinking about that sort of stuff at this age. I'm happy to find so many of my daughter's friends' parents agree -- even some with boys who say their sons still don't really know how babies are made (they shouldn't at this age!!!). Let them be kids a while longer!! This world rips away their childhoods long before that should happen as it is! Before giving this book to my daughter, I read it cover-to-cover on my own and I LOVED it. There was nothing in this book that would spoil your unspoiled daughter. The closest the author comes is talking about how your daughter might find herself having different kinds of feelings for kids she used to think of only as friends or classmates, and that's okay. The writer doesn't say having feelings for "boys" -- she keeps it sexually neutral -- which is refreshing. It doesn't get into sex education. There is a very troubled boy in my daughter's school who routinely says inappropriate sexually charged things to her & her friends. My daughter thankfully doesn't understand most of the slang words he uses (so she comes home to ask me -- to my horror that this boy is saying such things). Well this charming young man asked my daughter the other day if she is gay. My daughter knows this term because she has an uncle who is gay and she loves him dearly. She was raised with no concept that being gay is in any way different from being straight. She was raised to know that being gay is not a choice people make -- they are born that way -- and that God doesn't make mistakes. Her answer to this boy who asked if she is gay was, "I don't know -- I haven't fallen in love with anyone yet". OMG!! I about died of pride!!! This book helped prepare her for a question of that nature. I wanted a book that explained the process of a period and the general purpose of it without prehistoric ideas of sexuality. I wanted a book that would tell her what is happening to her body without the extra street knowledge of sex. This book is very "clean" in that regard but it's also not religious or conservative -- which we didn't want either. It's as informative as it needs to be for total understanding of what's happening in puberty, written in an open-minded and progressive way, without being too advanced. It is well written. This is such a good book that I'm recommending it to everyone I know with girls this age who are like my own daughter. Bravo to the writer.