A Very Touching Book...for Little People and for Big People

Parents like myself ask ourselves "How can I prevent this from happening? Is there any way?" There is no way to prevent such a thing from happening entirely, of course, but I want to do anything I can do to make my children be aware of their rights in regard to their bodies and their sexuality and that no one has the right to abuse them this way. If the worst did happen and my child were molested, I would want him or her (I have both) to immediately tell me or another trustworthy adult and begin the work of recovery.

Jan Hindman's book is an excellent way to introduce even the youngest children to the idea of their sexual rights. It goes through the proper terms for male and female sexual anatomy and does a good job of addressing the embarrassment often goes with these words in a humorous way. There are simple, no-nonsense cartoons of naked adults and children to clarify the body part discussion - very important because if a child is sexually abused he or she needs to name the body parts involved correctly.

What I like most about Hindman's approach is that she helps to clarify what sexual abuse is and is not by creating 3 categories of touching: good, bad and secret. Good touching is defined as touching that is pleasant and makes people feel good (hugging, for example); bad touching hurts people (eg, hitting); secret touching is just what it says it is - secret and it is not okay to keep this secret. The strength of this approach is that it can prevent confusion about what is and is not molestation. An example from the book is of a boy and his grandfather who have gone into a pond and gotten lots of mud and frogs in their underwear (yes, this book can be quite funny on the little-kid level). The boy is staying at his grandfather's house and the grandfather must clean the boy's private parts and so they take a bath together and they get clean and they go tell grandma about it and everybody laughs. Is this molestation? No, because grandpa did not tell the boy to keep anything a secret.

The book does an excellent job of repeating key ideas a lot so that even a 2-3 year old can get the main idea, i.e., to never keep a secret about touching. She also gives a brief explanation about why this kind of touching is bad, bringing in the idea of consent. This approach is more useful than the old "don't let anyone touch you where your bathing suit is" warning.

The only quibble I have, and it is a minor one, is that I really don't like the illustrator. The goofy pictures get the job done and are funny, but I think they're amateurish and ugly. This is just a matter of taste, of course, and the book meets the goal of educating kids about this very important problem in an entertaining way.