From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-This collection of 12 stories is something of a mixed bag. Pat Brisson's opening selection, in which Carly, 16, runs a hilarious obstacle course through her high school to get to the girls' room, is lighthearted and entertaining. It is followed by a survey of depressed premenstrual young women from around the world. Alice McGill's "Moon Time Child" is a slave narrative in which Salome, 13, dreads her first period because it will render her a breeder. All is well, however, when a kind older woman finds a way for her to breed with the elder's grandson. In Deborah Heiligman's "Ritual Purity," tough, drug-addicted Mimi is sent to live with Orthodox Jewish relatives; when her aunt miscarries and Mimi saves her life, she also learns to value her own. Fraustino's "Sleeping Beauty" is the inner monologue of an overachieving premed student who denies her own pregnancy until she gives birth in a stall in her dorm bathroom. More affecting, and more subtly drawn, is Han Nolan's Southern Gothic "Maroon," about the death of a teenage girl by coat-hanger abortion, as seen through the eyes of her eight-year-old cousin. Despite the few bright spots, the tone tends to be heavy-handed and a bit preachy; overall the selections tell quite a bit more than they show. Good nonfiction, like Lynda Madaras's
What's Happening to My Body? Book for Girls (Newmarket, 1991) and fiction like Erzsi Deàk and Kristin Embry Litchman's
Period Pieces (HarperCollins, 2003) cover the subject with more style, humor, and grace.
-Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 8-12. Last year's anthology
Period Pieces [BKL Mr 15 2003] focused mostly on humorous, reassuring stories about girls' first periods. This collection aims for an older audience and a broader range of experiences. Contributed by familiar youth authors as well as newcomers, the stories include a few first "moon times," many set in diverse cultures and historical times. In one story, a young African American slave dreads the period that will mark her a "breeder"; in another, a Lenni-Lenape Indian girl celebrates her first entrance to the woman's hut. In many selections, though, periods are just one element in complex, disturbing stories that focus instead on larger women's issues--pregnancy and miscarriage, sex, relationships, body image, and ties to family. In many of these stories, periods are inconvenient, gory (there are some startling, visceral details), and blindingly painful. But that honesty is why, despite the stories' uneven tone and quality, many teens will be drawn to this powerful, provocative collection.
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
