Prime Numbers: a Sonar is now 11

Piano, track, Thomas Jefferson, opposition to standardized testing, homemade soap, the Declaration of Independence, Destination Imagination, jalapeños, yarn, peace, creative fireworks, tesselations, books in hand, html, photic sneezes, nonlinearity, monkey aspirations, rocket launcher, golden hair, self assurance, guitar chords, eleven years, love.

Sonar X11 with his Homemade Birthday Rocky Road Ice CreamSome people have birthday cake. Some have birthday pie. This one wanted homemade birthday rocky road ice cream. And not only did he not mind that we didn’t have eleven matching candles, he thought it was cooler that way. Happy birthday to the baby that made me a mama. Keep zooming to the stars!

Educational Enrichment: Toward a Comprehensive Sex Education Curriculum for the Sonars

“I’ve always felt, in all my books, that there’s a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence — providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.” -Studs Terkel

Sonar X10 was recently subjected to three days of Personal Responsibilty Classes at school. Personal Responsibility, we learned, is code for Sex Ed. These three days of lessons were announced by a letter home that included an Opt Out form, as well as a Parent Meeting to allow parents an opportunity to ask questions of the teachers, curriculum developers, and counselors. It all struck me as a little melodramatic, especially for an ignorance abstinence-only state.

In that three days, or rather three class periods, less than three hours total, the kids learned what they need to know about their bodies and the bodies around them. Humans are sexual creatures. Three hours just isn’t enough. Especially at an age when puberty is slamming into many of them at 100 miles per hour.

So I’m supplementing. I know this is one of my jobs as a parent, educating them about their bodies, their values, their place in this world. And I’m up for the challenge. We’re talking, of course. We have been for a while. But I also feel the need to throw some books into the mix. I’m not sure why I didn’t think about this directly before, but because we are sexual beings, the conversation about sex needs to be continuous and broad. I’ve often joked that I’m a feminist who is changing the world one Sonar at a time. So I’d best get a little more fire under the burner of their broad-minded and respectful sexuality education. For a good approximation of my values about sexuality and what I hope to impart to the Sonars, check out Scarleteen’s Definition of Feminist Sex Education. 

Books are a great medium of communication, especially for my avid readers. Books have the advantage of being consumed and digested in the privacy of one’s own head, and they do such a good job of being available on the shelf when the interest strikes a kid who might not want to face mom or dad yammering on about hormones and normalcy. I’m searching for the best books to share with the Sonars. I’m going to share an annotated bibliography of the books I have a chance to look at and name the ones that get put on the shelf. Here’s my working list, compiled from what is available at my local library and from various internet sources.

If the list seems skewed toward boys, that’s because all of the Sonars are boys, but I want them to understand the range of gender and sexuality experience. I will focus on books for younger audiences first, but I also want books that will meet them as they grow. 

This list is only a beginning point. Please chime in with your favorite sex ed book.

Sex Ed Books for the Youngish Set 

It’s So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families by Robie H. Haris, illustrated by Michael Emberley 

On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow! A “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Younger Boys by Lynda Madaras

Ready, Set, Grow! A “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Younger Girls by Lynda Madaras

What’s Going on Down There? Answers to Questions Boys Find Hard to Ask by Karen Gravelle with Nick and Chava Castro

It’s Perfectly Normal: a Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Haris, illustrated by Michael Emberly

What If Someone I Know is Gay? Answers to Questions About What It Means to Be Gay and Lesbian by Eric Marcus

Books for the Adolescent-ish Among You

The What’s Happening To My Body? Book for Boys by Lynda Madaras with Dane Saavedra

The What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls by Lynda Madaras with Area Madaras

Is It a Choice? Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Gay and Lesbian People by Eric Marcus

The Go Ask Alice Book of Answers by Columbia University’s Health Education Program

The Guy Book: An Owner’s Manual (Maintenance, Safety, and Operating Instructions for Teens) by Mavis Jukes

S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide by Heather Corinna

Books for Parent-y Ones, trying to figure out what to say and how to say it

How to Talk to Your Child About Sex by Linda and Richard Eyre

Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (but were afraid they’d ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child’s Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens by Justin Richardson and Mark A. Schuster

Comprehensive Sexuality Education Guidelines from Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)

When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—and Sex Education—Since the Sixties by Kristin Luker

A Box of Paper

I am not shy about taking useful objects out of other people’s trash. I am most likely to rescue such unfortunates if I can use them myself, but I have also been known to snatch items from the trash and take them to local charities. 

Once, when our communal trash spot was an alley, we saved an end table, which we painted bright blue and put in the corner of our living room. Other times we have taken lumber or other raw materials to be used in household projects. 

I lamented an inability to save a large dog house that was being pitched. I don’t have a dog or need a dog house, but it seemed a shame for such a large thing with so much more good use in it to end up in a landfill. Too late it occurred to me that I could have called one of the many charities with trucks to come haul it away.

Trash-rescue is a family trait. One relative saved a lovely sheet set and comforter from a dumpster near her house, laundering the soft jersey back into life. She gave us the mismatched comforter that was in the bag. We dyed the comforter purple and still use it in the summertime, some ten years after the fact. 

About five years ago, a neighbor put out a box with her trash bags. 

I must have walked by it twice before I realized that it was a box of paper. Thankfully there had been no rain that day. I didn’t have the sort of printer that accepted continuous-feed paper (you know, the kind with the strips of holes down both sides?), but I did have three scribbly Sonars. The first time I went to salvage the box, I had the smallest Sonar on my hip, but couldn’t manage him and the box at the same time. I returned a little bit later, surprised to find that the box was more than three-fourths full of crisp, white, unblemished paper. 

In the past five years that paper has been torn off in single sheets, or long strips. It has been folded into countless airplanes, cranes, frogs, boxes, and other origami-joy, as well as wadded into balls of frustration. It has been colored on, penciled on, painted on, cut out, torn up, and traced into dabbles of Sonar imagination. I have written lists, planned stories, and folded envelopes for bits of mail that didn’t seem to fit into anything else suitable for the U.S. Postal Service. The thin, hole-y edge strips have been rolled and twisted into whimsical scrolls, and taped together into tails and ribbons. I frequently find them, forgotten after some frenzy of creation, under the couch. 

I went to get a few sheets of paper the other day, surprised to find that after five years of weekly, if not daily use, the box is still more than one-fourth full. What dreams will yet unfold from those leaves? 

The Dinosaur Plant Rises Again

Please click to embiggen any photo.

Here on the Texas coast we have a lot of tropical foliage. In spite of our semi-arid climate (and a devastating ongoing drought), our humid atmosphere and generally mild winters allow many tropical plants to thrive. We have one such tropical in our front yard. We affectionately call it the Dinosaur Plant. We imagine it in some prehistoric landscape with its giant leaves being nibbled for dinosaur elevenses. Here it is a few years ago, with some tiny Sonars:

Then, the dinosaur plant was larger than our van, with its giant hand-like leaves forming an umbrella that wee people could tunnel under for a good hide-and-seek spot. The weight of its soft, leaning trunks eventually caused it to tip over in great loops. So we gave it a dramatic haircut a couple of years ago. 

The leaves filled-in very quickly, faster perhaps, because we’d made more room for them to grow. Last Halloween, a fuller-bodied version of the Dinosaur Plant supervised our graveyard.

I suppose it’s some kind of philodendron or something. I’m no plant expert. As I mentioned, our winters are mild. For the past several years, our coldest winter weather involved two hours at the freezing point, in the middle of one or two nights during the entire winter. The barest threat of freezing temperatures incites a fury of linen spread in front yards by tropical plant lovers. Bushes wrapped in quilts and bedsheets, some with extension cords strung for electric blankets.

The Dinosaur Plant has a fair amount of mass, and so we have never worried about a dalliance with freezing temperatures. No blanket has ever swathed those giant leaves, electric or otherwise. Oh sure, the tips of her fingers were sometimes a little frost-bitten, but nothing very serious.

This winter was a bit different. We had a week of subzero temperatures, with blisteringly cold windchills, topped off with an ice storm that shut down the entire Coastal Bend of Texas for a couple of days. Exciting stuff. Many people in the area had never experienced an ice storm. Corpus Christi’s landmark Harbor Bridge was coated in a fine sheet of ice, impassable for more than a day, not because of ice on the road, but because of the giant chunks of ice falling from the superstructure. Tropical plants withered up and died left and right. The Dinosaur Plant sustained heavy damage. When the trunks thawed, they turned a bit mushy. We were forced to cut her back to ground level and wonder if she’d grow back.

She did. 

Hope springs eternal.

ABAW Twofer: Gossamer by Lois Lowry and The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Gossamer by Lois Lowry, Yearling, 2006

A lonely woman fosters a troubled boy. They are both strengthened and healed by the small creatures that bring them dreams in the night. Littlest One is a dream-bringer under the tutelage of Thin Eldest. Each night, the pair visits the house of an old woman. When she takes in John, an angry young survivor of abuse, the skill of the small dream-bringers is tested. John’s vulnerability makes him susceptible to fearsome Sinisteeds, horrifying bringers of nightmares. The dream-bringers build dreams by gently touching the cherished objects of the people they visit: a button, a shell, a family afghan, a photograph, a stuffed animal. John has precious few cherished objects to touch. His time with the old woman changes this. Littlest One cannot stop the Sinisteeds from tormenting John, but with the power of her dreams, she is able to make him stronger, and in the process, to grow in strength and confidence herself. 

This is a sweet, quiet story, occurring over a couple of weeks at the end of one summer vacation. Though the dream-bringers are quite fantastic, the story of the relationships between the people is realistic and touching. Not all is resolved in this story because life is not that simple and the torment John and his mother have suffered is significant. But we do get a sense that each of the three main characters, the old woman, John, and his mother, are set on a road in which they can heal themselves and things will get better. I loved reading this book out loud to all the Sonars. This is a beautiful story to build empathy and to illustrate the importance of dreams and of understanding the story of each person in the world. Perhaps it could also be used as a healing tool for families surviving abuse. 

The Kane Chronicles Book 1: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

In the same spirit, structure, and sense of adventure that Riordan gave to us with the Percy Jackson novels, The Red Pyramid takes us on a ride through Egyptian mythology in the modern world. Carter Kane travels the world with his archaeologist father. They stop in to London once or twice a year to visit Carter’s sister Sophie. She has lived there with their grandparents since the tragic death of their mother. The siblings are beginning to wonder why they’ve been kept separate for so long and just what happened to their mom. Before they can get answers, dad blows up the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, gets entombed in an alternate plane, and releases a handful of Egyptian gods, including the chaos god Set. With the help of a mysterious uncle, a cat-goddess, a baboon, and an albino crocodile, Carter and Sophie have to learn how to use their magic, escape the wizards of the House of Life, and stop Set from blowing up Phoenix.

The Sonars really liked this one and we look forward to reading subsequent books featuring Carter and Sophie.