yonmei

Equivalent in what way? Because my immediate instinct is to link to this list of sex-ed type books on Bilerico (incl. comments,) but that's pretty specific so I don't know how relevant it is.

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Equivalent. A friendly, informative, non-sexist book that covers the same kinds of information sets - how your body works, contraception, sexual orientation, etc, appropriate for teenager-upwards.

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Then that post might have something, but otherwise -- well, my brother got two books when he looked about to hit puberty and both of them suffered from severe heterosexism, etc., so I'd like to find a book like that myself.

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Dammit.

:-(

Maybe I should ask my nephew if he'd like to help me write one.

(I'm going to give him a couple of useful books on How To Write and How To Use Numbers for his Christmas, and it occurred to me that if there existed a male equivalent to Our Bodies, Ourselves, giving that to him in the context of "Other Instruction manuals" would probably be the least possible embarrassing way of providing that level of information. I know of some good material specifically written for gay/bi teenagers, but I don't know of anything directed at boys/young men that makes no presumptions about their sexual orientation at all.

I have no idea what his sexual orientation is, which IMO is quite proper, though his mum's fairly sure he's interested in at least one young woman.)

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Specifically for boys, no, and it might be too young, but It's Perfectly Normal is probably excellent. I haven't seen it in years -- and a new edition just came out last month -- but what I saw was terrific, and Geoff and I got his kids the younger-kids' version years ago.

I first saw the book when it was on display as part of the Our Whole Lives curriculum, which doubtless uses other excellent resources as well and has curricula for people ages 16-18 and 18-35 as well as the younger sets, but I don't know how useful their materials would be outside of the format they're designed for: multiple-session small-group meetings. But they might be worth checking out regardless.

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Looks like the kind of thing I was looking for, except really omg expensive - evidently intended for institutions to buy rather than individuals. (Also, it's slightly problematic for me not being able to riff through the book before I buy it, though your personal recommendation really practically makes up for that.)

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Have you looked at the Teenage Health Freak books? I remember there being two when I was a teenager: one for boys and one for girls, but they seem to have spawned an entire series in the 21st Century.

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I'll see if I can find them and have a look inside. (From the covers, they're exactly the kind of book my nephew certainly used to like when I would buy him Horrible Histories.)

The thing about Our Bodies, Ourselves (as I recall) was that it was really a serious reference book - one could have kept it on the shelf to refer to almost at any age, even if the necessary bulk of the information was Stuff You'd Want To Know 14-19 sort of age.

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