#101: Talk to Me First

Talk to Me First: Everything You Need to Know to Become Your Kids' Go-To Person About Sex, by Deborah Roffman

(Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012)

Summary:
"Nationally acclaimed educator and author of Sex and Sensibility, Deborah Roffman distills her more than thirty years of experience teaching kids -- and their parents -- into this indispensable guide, helping you to be your kids' number one source for information and guidance on human sexuality. Roffman tackles everything from developmental stages to strategies for handling embarrassing or difficult conversations, offering the best way to make sure you both keep talking (and listening)."

Table of Contents:

1. Getting There First About Sex
2. Raising Children in a World Gone Upside Down
3. Parenting Is a Five-Piece Suit
4. Affirmation: Our Children as Sexual Beings
5. Information: Folding in the Facts
6. Clarity About Value: Honing Your Message
7. The Delicate Art of Limit-Setting
8. Anticipatory Guidance: Turning Children over to Themselves
9. Practice Makes Perfect: Let's Go Fishing

My Take:
Here's one where I really wish I'd kept up on my blogging, as I remember this being an especially useful book about parents, kids of all ages, and communications around sexuality (and in general). Unfortunately, enough time has gone by that the book's long been returned to the library and I don't recall enough specifics to comment on in more detail. Oh well. If you're looking for a good book about talking with kids about sex that doesn't push a particular agenda, read this one.  

#98: French Kids Eat Everything

French Kids Eat Everything: 

How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters, by Karen Le Billon

(New York: William Morrow, 2012)

 

Summary:

"Moving her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon is prepared for some cultural adjustment but is surprised by the food education she and her family (at first unwillingly) receive. In contrast to her daughters, French children feed themselves neatly and happily -- eating everything from beets to broccoli, salad to spinach, mussels to muesli. The family's food habits come under scrutiny, as Karen is lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack -- 'a recipe for obesity!' -- and forbidden from packing her older daughter a lunch in lieu of the elaborate school meal.

"The family soon begins to see the wisdom in the 'food rules' that help the French foster healthy eating habits and good manners -- from the rigid 'no snacking' rule to commonsense food routines that we used to share but have somehow forgotten. Soon, the family cures picky eating and learns to love trying new foods. But the real challenge comes when they move back to North America -- where their commitment to 'eating French' is put to the test. The result is a family food revolution with surprising but happy results -- which suggest we need to dramatically rethink the way we feed children, at home and at school."

Table of Contents:

1. French Kids Eat Everything (and Yours Can Too)
2. Baby Steps and Beet Puree: We Move to France, and Encounter Unidentified Edible Objects
3. Schooling the Stomach: We Start Learning to "Eat French" (the Hard Way)
4. L'art de la table: A Meal with Friends, and a Friendly Argument
5. Food Fights: How Not to Get Your Kids to Eat Everything
6. The Kohlrabi Experiment: Learning to Love New Foods
7. Four Square Meals a Day: Why French Kids Don't Snack
8. Slow Food Nation: It's Not Only What You Eat, It's Also How You Eat
9. The Best of Both Worlds
10. The Most Important Food Rule of All 

My Take:
Liked it, but not quite so much as Bringing Up Bebe. I think the chief difference is that Le Billon managed to push some of my rusty-but-still-functioning parental guilt/ smugness buttons in a way Druckerman's book didn't. To be fair, the two aren't identical; French Kids is more narrowly focused on the French attitude towards food and eating, while Bebe is a broader observation on French parenting in general.

Anyway, it's no secret that I've wrestled with my share of parenting demons over the years. I've always been a working mother; I nursed my daughter for a year; she has no siblings. For all the much-publicized trials of raising a teenager, this is one thing that gets better with time; you've realized by now that whether and how long you breast-fed and what you do from 9 to 5 really doesn't matter all that much, and you can commiserate with other parents about adolescent attitude flare-ups without their insisting that you wouldn't have this problem if only you were co-sleeping.

One of the areas where I never quite fit the toddler parenting mold was preparedness. I carried a diaper bag when we still needed one, and would toss in a favorite toy or 2 if we were traveling to a kid-free home overnight, but other than that, I was never The Mom Who Has Everything. And while I sometimes wished I had a Band-Aid or box o' wipes handy, neither Twig nor I ever suffered for a lack of little prepackaged baggies of Teddy Grahams and goldfish crackers. Sure, I felt a little sheepish on those play dates where other moms ended up feeding both their own kid and mine from their Cheerios stash, but I also knew Twig was way more interested in the playground than the food, and probably wouldn't have thought to ask for a snack on her own if her friend wasn't having one right there in front of her. In fact, my first inkling that the local Supermom (a truly lovely person whose child was Twig's favorite preschool playmate) just might not win all the medals in the parenting Olympics came when we took the kids to lunch at a grocery store cafe, and Twig happily devoured her strawberries and yogurt without much prompting, while Supermom laboriously spread cream cheese on tortilla chips one by one for Superkid.

Point is, I was primed from the get-go to do some private eye-rolling at some of the French parenting norms that proved so hard for Le Billon to accept. Of course you don't make special kid-friendly food at every meal; if a child is hungry enough, s/he'll eat at least some of what everyone else is having. And naturally the after-school snack can wait till you get home; barring exceptional circumstances, there's no need for regularly dining a la car. (5 hour road trips? Sure, pack a few snacks. A 15-minute trip home from school or day care? Not so much.) Long story short (or at least shorter than it would be if I kept on keepin' on), Le Billon's observations about French food culture are fascinating to think about for anyone interested in the topic, whether or not they have young children, though I ended up without much sympathy for the author herself.

#77: The Life Before Us

The Life Before Us (Madame Rosa), 

by Romain Gary (Emile Ajar), translated by Ralph Manheim

(New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1986)

Summary:
"The Life Before Us is the story of an orphaned Arab boy, Momo, and his devotion to Madame Rosa, a dying 68-year-old, 220 lb. survivor of Auschwitz and retired “lady of the night.” Momo has been one of the ever-changing rag-bag of whore’s children at Madame Rosa’s boarding-house in Paris ever since he can remember. But when the check that pays for his keep no longer arrives and Madame Rosa becomes too ill to climb the stairs to their apartment, he determines to support her any way he can.

"This sensitive, slightly macabre love story has a supporting cast of transvestites, pimps, and witch doctors. Published by Romain Gary under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar, this novel won France’s premier literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1975, making Gary the only author to have won the Goncourt twice (illicitly). The Life Before Us breaks many other rules, as well as the reader’s heart."

Opening Line:
"The first thing I have to tell you is that we lived on the seventh-floor walk-up, so you can take my word for it that Madame Rosa, with all the pounds  she had to lug around with her, had more than her share of daily life with all its sorrows and cares."

My Take:
This is my hometown's (and our biggest college's) community read this year, so I thought I'd give it a try even though there was little chance I'd be home enough to attend any of the community events (which I've never done in the past even when I was home, anyway). Turned out to be better and more engaging at the end, but still didn't really speak to me. This may be partly a function of the translation, but I found the stream-of-consciousness, wise-beyond-his-years-but-still-prone-to-frequent-malapropisms style in which Momo narrates the novel off-putting. Rare is the author who can make a child or adolescent narrator both engaging and authentic, and I don't think Gary pulls it off here. The book seems a surprising choice for a community read, and I can't help skeptically wondering if it was selected more because a) it reminds us that the lines between different religions, ethnicities, and genders can be quite blurry, and b) depicts strong friendships, even love, across the lines, albeit among those who live somewhat outside the margins of French society. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed the novel more if I were reading and discussing it with a group, but as it was, I don't think I fully appreciated it on my own.

#38: Little Girls Can Be Mean

Little Girls Can Be Mean: Four Steps To Bully-Proof Girls in the Early Grades, by Michelle Anthony and Reyna Lindert (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010).

Summary:
"In today's world, girls are facing myriad friendship issues, including bullying and cliques. As a parent, you are likely wondering how to guide your daughter through these situations effectively. Little Girls Can Be Mean is the first book to tackle the unique social struggles of elementary-aged girls, giving you the tools to help your child become stronger, happier, and better able to enjoy friendships and handle social cruelty.

"Michelle Anthony and Reyna Lindert's simple, four-step plan will help you become a problem-solving partner with your daughter. They also offer tips for educators and insights that girls can use to confront social difficulties in an empowered way. Whether your daughter is just starting kindergarten or is on her way to middle school, you'll learn how to:

• observe the social situation with new eyes
• connect with your child in a new way
• guide your child with simple, compassionate strategies
• support your daughter to act more independently to face the social issue.

"By focusing squarely on the issues and needs of girls in the years before adolescence, Little Girls Can Be Mean is the essential go-to guide for any parent, counselor, or educator of girls in grades K-6."

Table of Contents:

I. Laying the Foundation: The Four-Step Approach

1. The Rise of Social Cruelty

2. How Can I Help My Daughter or Student?

• What Is Bullying?
• Building the Foundation
• Facing Tough Situations
• Following the Four-Step Plan
• Step 1: Observe
• Step 2: Connect
• Step 3: Guide
• Step 4: Support to Act
• Integrating the Four Steps
• How Long Will This All Take?

3. Think, Share, Do ... Activity Bank for Part I

II. The Heart of the Matter: Applying the Four Steps to Real Situations Faced by Real Girls

4. Side by Side: Best Friends, Worst Enemies

• Dealing with a Turf War
• When Best Friends Pull Away
• Yo-Yo Friendships

5. Going Along with the Gang

• When Girls Struggle to Fit In
• When Girls Struggle with Feeling "Different"
• When Girls Struggle with Going Along with the Group
• When the Group Turns Against Your Child

6. All Girls Can Be Mean: When Your Daughter Is Acting Like a Mean Girl

• There Are Two Sides to Every Story
• The Power Rush of Popularity
• When Girls Struggle with Following the Group

7. Think, Share, Do ... Activity Bank for Part II

III. Wrapping Up: Using the Four Steps in Your Home, School, or Office

• The Difference Between "Younger" and "Older" Girls
• Facing All Kinds of Issues, Together
• She Is Not Alone

My Take:
Meh. Is my guilty love of self-help manuals finally drawing to a close? I guess this one's a useful reminder, or introduction to the principles involved if you're not familiar with the subject, but there didn't seem to be a lot of meat (or non-animal protein, for my vegetarian friends) here. In brief, pay attention to what's going on with your kid even before she explicitly tells you about it; use active listening to draw out both the facts and her feelings; and help her brainstorm about what to do without going all Mama Bear and taking over. Next.

#15 - Room

Room, by Emma Donoghue (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2010).

Summary: "To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination -- the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe below Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night in case Old Nick comes.

"Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held since she was nineteen -- for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation -- and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

"Told in the poignant and funny voice of Jack, Room is a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child. It is a shocking, exhilarating, and riveting novel -- but always deeply human and always moving. Room is a place you'll never forget."

Opening Lines: "Today I'm five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I'm changed to five, abracadabra."

My Take: O. M. G. It's not often that I read a book that's generated so much buzz without feeling a let down, but this is most certainly one of those times. In a word, Room is brilliant. I came home from Job #2 & stayed up way later than I should have last night (well, at least it was late for me) finishing it; I couldn't wait to find out how things resolved.

The above summary provides the basic premise for those who've somehow missed the corona of reviews this book's generated over the past year or so. Old Nick has held Ma captive in Room for 7 years, ever since kidnapping her off the street when she was 19, and Jack's lived his entire 5 years within Room's four windowless walls. From some inexplicable reservoir of strength, Ma has managed to give Jack a remarkably healthy and secure childhood, considering. He exercises every day (piling all the furniture in the center of the room and running laps on Track, jumping on Bed a/k/a Trampoline), reads and writes and knows every story his mother can think of, and treasures the toys they've made from eggshells and old vitamin bottles. Ma strictly limits their TV viewing, is absolutely insistent on brushing teeth after each meal, and reads Dylan the Digger (one of a tiny handful of books in Room) Over. And. Over. Again. even when it gets on her last nerve. She tucks Jack into a cozy nest in Wardrobe each night, desperate to keep Old Nick from seeing him on those occasions when he stops by. Perhaps most remarkably, she never gives up hope; every weekday, she and Jack stand on Table to get as close to Skylight as they can, and scream as loud as possible in hopes that someone will hear. And it took me a while to realize that the light-flickering that occasionally wakes Jack at night is Ma's determined attempt to signal someone -- anyone -- who might see the light and investigate.

In short, Ma's prison is Jack's whole world. As she explains later, he knows the difference between real (what's inside Room) and TV, but not between Room and Outside; she can't bear to tell him that there's a whole world of fun that he's missing out on.

To Donoghue's credit, as compelling as the world she creates inside Room for Ma and Jack is, the latter part of the novel -- in which the two finally do escape -- is at least as intriguing and provocative. We've all heard the news stories about kidnap victims long given up for dead and then freed after years and years have gone by, but Room's exploration of what it's like for Ma to re-enter the world and Jack to experience Outside for the first time is absolutely stunning. For years, Ma has ached to see her parents and brother Paul again, to swing with Jack as she once did with Paul in the backyard hammock ... only to find that her parents' marriage didn't survive their grief at losing her (Ma's mother never gave up hope; her father believed her dead and even held a memorial service). Jack's first-ever outing without Ma -- a trip to the Museum of Natural History with Paul and his family -- is rescheduled, when he's overwhelmed by what's supposed to be just a quick pit stop at the local mall. Likewise, his newfound grandmother takes him to a playground only to find that he doesn't know how to play with other children. Trapped indoors for years, both Jack and Ma sunburn at the drop of a hat. That's probably more than enough spoilers to tease those of you (all my legions of readers), but I can't say it loudly enough: You must read this book.

#57 - The Good Thief

The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti (New York: Dial Press, 2008)

Jacket summary: "Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents.

"Twelve-year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.

"But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well."

Opening line: "The man arrived after morning prayers."

My take: Pretty darned good for a picaresque, and this is saying a lot, as this isn't usually my favorite genre. Cliche though it may be, I can't help rooting for an orphans hard-luck story -- even when the orphan, like Ren, is a petty thief from the get-go. As an infant, the one-handed Ren was pushed through a hole in a Boston monastery wall by an anonymous stranger on a miserable, rainy night. Now, twelve years later, he's too old for those couples who occasionally come to the monastery seeking a child to raise on their own, and his missing hand renders him unsuitable for those who want an older lad to help with the farm work. Consequently, he's pretty much resigned to being sold off/ conscripted into the army once he's of age, and when Benjamin Nab suddenly appears, claiming to be his long-lost brother and planning to take Ren away, neither Ren nor Father Joseph ask too many questions.

And that's where the real adventure begins. While Ren may be an incorrigible thief (he even swipes Father John's Lives of the Saints on his way out the door, just because), he's downright saintly compared to Benjamin and his ex-schoolteacher crony, Tom. While the term may not have been widely used 200 years ago, take my word for it -- these guys defined the word "sleazeballs." They hop from town to town, running minor variations on the con du jour until the locals wise up; in one chapter, they sell a magical bottled elixir that's guaranteed to cure naughty children's misbehavior (which it does, seeing as it's laced heavily with opium). When they need a big score, they rob graves. This horrifies the Catholic-raised Ren, especially on his first excursion; as he stands guard in the getaway wagon, he sees one of the first corpses harvested that night start to sit up. Mr. Buried-Alive turns out to be Dolly, a tattered but unrepentant murderer. Inexplicably, Ren repeatedly convinces Benjamin and Tom to let Dolly live and not abandon them, and an odd friendship of sorts forms between the two.

Several factors kept me reading in spite of the grotesquerie, the foremost of which is that I was just plain curious about Ren's identity and past. The one clue he has is a scrap of collar, hand-embroidered with the letters "R E N," which he's carried on his person since it was found in his bassinet with him. We learn almost immediately that Benjamin's long-lost brother story is a ruse, and we don't know what to make of his next tale (he tells Tom that Ren is his son), but we know he's important somehow, and must have had some reason for picking Ren out of the orphans' lineup. Then, too, I couldn't decide whether to prepare myself for yet another "rogues with hearts of gold deep-down" ending, or just plain wonder what it would mean for this pair of old-school bad-asses to saddle themselves, over the course of the novel, with more and more human baggage: Ren, Dolly, a half-deaf landlady with a mysterious nighttime visitor, and a brace of inseparable orphan twins whose back story (their mother committed suicide) is at least as pathetic as Ren's own.

The Good Thief is a quick and entertaining read. Give it a try, even if you're not sure it's your cup of tea.

#14 - Jim the Boy

My 14th book of the year was Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley (Boston, 2000).

Summary: "Tony Earley made his debut with Here We Are in Paradise, a superbly understated collection of (mostly) small-town vignettes. He returns to the same terrain in his first novel, Jim the Boy, setting this coming-of-age story in a remote North Carolina hamlet. The year is 1934, and like the rest of the country, Aliceville is feeling the pinch of the Great Depression. Yet neither Jim nor his mother nor his three uncles -- who have split the paternal role neatly among themselves since the death of Jim's father a decade earlier -- are feeling much in the way of economic pain. Indeed, if you stuck a satellite dish on the front lawn, the story might be taking place in the New South rather than the older, bucolic one.This isn't to suggest that Earley is deaf to social detail. Indeed, there are all sorts of wonderful touches, like the decor in Jim's classroom,with its 'large, colorful maps of the United States, the Confederacy, and the Holy Land during the time of Jesus.' But Jim the Boy is very much the tale of a 10-year-old's expanding consciousness, which at first barely extends beyond the family property. Earley has a real gift for conveying childhood epiphanies, like Jim's sudden apprehension of the wider world during a trip in Uncle Al's truck: 'Two thoughts came to Jim at once, joined by a thread of amazement: he thought, People live here, and he thought, They don't know who I am. At that moment the world opened up around Jim like hands that, until that moment, had been cupped around him; he felt very small, almost invisible, in the open air of their center, but knew that the hands would not let him go. It was almost like flying.' The simple lyricism and anti-ironic sweetness work mostly to the book's advantage. There are times, it's true, when Earley sands his prose down to an unnatural smoothness, and we seem to be edging toward the sentimental precincts of a young-adult novel. But on the whole, Jim the Boy is a lovely, meticulous work--a song of innocence and (eventually) experience, delivered with just a hint of a North Carolina accent."

My reaction, in a nutshell: Appreciated it on a literary level, in that it was well-written with (cough) luminous prose and what have you, and much of the description, both of landscape and emotional states, was understated and lovely. Not enough of a plot for me to really love it, though.

#95 - The Hurried Child

This one's a classic of sorts. The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, by David Elkind (Addison-Wesley, 1981), is almost 30 years old -- laughably ancient, by pop psych or child development standards. Yes, there was a 25th anniversary edition published recently, but that's not the one I checked out; I've got the original golden oldie. Frankly, I was curious. The book is somewhat of a classic in the parenting/ childhood in pop culture genre; if nothing else, it has historical significance.

And for the most part, it was worth reading. Elkind's basic premise, to quote the Amazon review above, is that "by blurring the boundaries of what is age appropriate, by expecting -- or imposing -- too much too soon, we force our kids to grow up too fast, to mimic adult sophistication while secretly yearning for innocence." While his explanation of causes seems pretty dated -- he lays a lot of blame on divorced parents and working mothers -- the effects he cites are spot-on, and remain relevant even now.

Admittedly, I was pretty skeptical throughout the first chapter. Yes, after reading So Sexy So Soon, The Lolita Effect, and The Shelter of Each Other, I got a chuckle reading about 30 year old movies and songs -- Little Darlings, "Take Your Time (Do It Right)," and "Do That to Me One More Time" -- "[portraying] young people as precocious and [presenting] them in more or less explicit sexual or manipulative situations." But some of Elkind's claims here seem misinformed or just silly. John Hinckley, Jr. did not become a failed assassin because his older siblings' successes "preempted all the personal identities held out as valuable by his parents." And I'm not sure I buy that there was a trend toward "obscuring the divisions between children and adults" in the late '70s and early '80s, or that it was common for children to call parents by their first names during this time. (Not in my sorely non-representative, but not particularly conservative, either, home town, anyway.)

As the text goes on, though, Elkind offers some interesting points to ponder. Among them:

• "Introducing preschool children to sports like skiing is in part symbolic. ... The statement is not only of conspicuous consumption but also of conspicuous concern: 'How concerned we are that our child get a head start, that he be the best.'" (He applies similar logic to those who push kids to read or play Little League ball before they're ready, too, just in case you're about to get your class- or education-conscious knickers in an "I would never" twist.)
• Post-feminist mothers tend to suffer from role conflict: if you opt to stay home with young children, you might be looked down upon, sooo ... you take up hyperparenting as a competitive sport. (Hazel's side note: The more things change ... )
• An educational system that's narrowly focused on standardized testing tends to make kids more interested in grades than in actually learning something. Increased cheating is likely here, too.

Not sure if I'll bother seeking it out for a while, but I'm curious as to what and how much has changed in the rerelease. In all, despite some of the late '70s/ early '80s silliness (yes, I've heard the hysteria about "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Puff the Magic Dragon" being drug allegories, but "Hey Jude"? Paul McCartney wrote that one for Julian Lennon when his parents split up, fer cryin' out loud!), The Hurried Child began an important discussion.

#78 - The Lolita Effect

Just took a foray into non-fiction again with The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, by M. Gigi Durham (Overlook Press, 2008). Having read more than a few hysterical and/or oversimplified books on this topic, I was a bit skeptical at first, but ended up being pleasantly surprised. Not only is The Lolita Effect far more balanced and nuanced than So Sexy So Soon, but it also scores high on readability.

The nuance begins with the title. Durham argues that while we (popular culture) have come to use "Lolita" to describe a young girl who deliberately behaves in a seductive manner, Dolores Haze, the original Lolita in that book by Nabokov, is not an intentional nymphet, but an innocent victim of her predatory, pedophile stepfather, Humbert Humbert. (True confessions time: shamefully, I haven't actually read Lolita, so I'm taking Durham's word for this.) She is also emphatic about not being anti-sex or advocating censorship. On the contrary, she suggests that previous works and authors on this topic (hel-LO, Mary Pipher!) have often tended toward an overly dualistic, "moral panic" approach that makes for some strange bedfellows (i.e., traditional, mostly Christian conservatives and progressive, usually sex-positive parents and teachers). Explains Durham,

"[I]t is not girls' sexuality in and of itself that is a problem; the problem is that the expression of girls' sexuality seems to be possible only within an extremely restrictive framework. Girls' sexuality, it seems, has to comply with the markers of sexuality that we recognize, and it cannot be manifested, recognized, or mobilized in other, potentially more empowering and supportive, ways."

Most of the book is devoted to defining the five myths that constitute the Lolita effect. These are as follows:

1. Sexuality equals looking sexy, or, in Durham's words, "if you've got it, flaunt it."
   
2. Exactly what looks (and therefore, is) sexy ("hot," in common parlance) is very narrowly defined. In short, the perfect girl/ woman looks like Barbie. Not only is this an unrealistic, unhealthy ideal for girls to aspire to, but it's racist and classist (after all, who has the money to buy The Look?) to boot.
3. Younger is better -- not just as in, society thinks women in their 20s are more attractive than those in their mothers' generation, but as in, very young, still a girl. Hearken back to the days of Britney Spears' Catholic school miniskirt-wearing, pigtail-sporting, lollipop-sucking debut, among other examples.
4. Violence is sexy. Here, Durham cites slasher films, music videos and lyrics, and violent video games a la Grand Theft Auto as examples.
   
5. Sexy is defined for and by the male gaze. Boys choose girls, girls are sex objects, and alternate pairings -- male-male, female-female, or even non-traditional male-female -- Just Don't Exist.
   

Durham is a professor of journalism and communication, so it's not surprising that the remedies she proposes tend heavily toward increased media literacy and consumer education. Again, she's very clear about not advocating censorship, partly because that's a slippery slope that might lead us to censor Lolita and Romeo and Juliet, and partly because she takes the matter-of-fact position that yes, children and adolescents are sexual, and we need to respect and acknowledge that ... it's just that we should be doing so in "more empowering and supportive ways" than we've tended to see of late. Her list of internet and print resources is impressive and useful, as well. It's been a while since I've said this of a book on parenting and/or sexuality, but I recommend this one highly.

#68 - I'm Too Sexy

Not sure what I think about this one. #68 was So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane E. Levin and (Ballantine, 2008). On one hand, the book does a good job of being interesting and compelling but not alarmist; on the other, doesn't really cover much new ground. If you're interested in the topic (for more details, check the official web site for the book here) and haven't read much about it, this one's worth reading; if you're already fairly familiar, you probably won't get much new from this book.