Children’s Books about Sex and Sexuality

Some parents at a school one of my children attends have raised concerns about the health curriculum that they are using. I haven’t reviewed it myself, so I will reserve comment for now, but in response I shared the following resources. I thought I’d post them here, too. Do you know of other resources you’d recommend about sex and sexuality for kids? Please share in the comments! Even if you think schools might shy away from using them, many families could choose to supplement health education at home.

First, I wish everyone could have these groundbreaking, inclusive, accessible, award-winning books (click on the titles for publisher links):

 
Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverburg, illustrated by Fiona Smith
 What Makes a Baby? by Cory Silverburg, illustrated by Fiona Smith

And lots of people already know Robie Harris’s work, but here’s a good overview by Julie Danielson that was posted at Kirkus when the 20th anniversary edition of It’s Perfectly Normal was published.
I want to acknowledge that there has been some criticism of Harris’s titles for being too entrenched in binary thinking about gender, but the updated versions of several of them do a better job on this front, I think. And, this editorial from Kirkus demonstrates thoughtful responsiveness to such criticism on the part of the author.


We also have A Kid’s First Book About Sex at our house, which I bought after reading this piece in The Horn Book Magazine by Christine Hepperman. This book isn’t in-print any longer, but the author, sex educator Joani Blank, has posted it and another title she wrote for kids online at the link above, free of charge.

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