Meg Cabot has an interesting post on her blog today about books and age appropriateness. You have to scan down a bit to the middle to find the part I’m talking about. It’s funny, but as soon as someone mentions whether or not a kid should be reading a book with sex in it, every woman my age immediately thinks back to fourth grade and Judy Blume’s FOREVER. My experience with that book was almost like Meg’s, except I was not the one reading the “dirty” bits aloud on the playground. And when someone else’s mom complained about us reading this book, my mum went out and bought it for me with strict instructions that I “had to read the entire book and I could not share it with any of my friends unless their mothers approved.” I wasn’t about to share it with any of my friends because I was too busy reading it over and over again! What I find particularly amusing now is that I must’ve read it seven or eight times over the next few years and while I understood what a rubber was during the sex scenes, I distinctly remember the day when I was a teen and I was rereading it and finally realized what she meant when she said that “so and so lived on a dead end street and there were always used rubbers lying around”. I seriously was picturing rubber boots and wondering why people would throw them out their car windows.
Meg and I had the same book upbringing and we both turned out okay, and possibly more informed (at least on the technicalities) than a lot of our friends who weren’t reading. And really, why should parents worry about their daughters reading books like this? All the book geeks are usually home on Saturday night reading about sex, while their friends are out having it!
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