When these arrived in the mail, Ariel was so excited; she immediately grabbed them and dashed off.  She’d finished both books by the end of the afternoon.  However, I didn’t get them back until I practically begged for them. 😉

Lily Robbins, MD

 Lily Robbins, M.D. was well done.  It’s the second fiction book in the Lily series.  There is some puberty-related content in the text, so it’s definitely a “girl book,” but it’s a good story.

Lilly Robbins, M.D., in Ariel’s words:

In this story, Lily sees an accident and decides she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, which makes her decide that the Girlz need to learn first-aid.  When one of the Girlz breaks her ankle and Lily tries putting a splint on it, the girl’s mom thinks Lily made it worse through the splint and the girl’s brothers had already given Reni a fat lip, the mom says that she can’t be in the Girlz club anymore because it is to dangerous.  In the end, Lily decides she doesn’t want to be a doctor after all and apologized to the Girlz that she had hurt their feelings and forced them to do something that they didn’t want to do.  She especially apologized to Reni because she had especially hurt her feelings; she had hurt them so bad that she was on the brink of the loss of that friendship.

Unfortunately, it seems that Ariel missed the major conflict and resolution in the story: that Lily was rather bossy and too much of a know-it-all, and that’s what was off-putting to people around her.  (These are struggles in our house, too.  ‘Though I suspect certain daughters come by it naturally because their mama has to work on this, too.)

The Body Book

As is pretty typical, I have mixed feelings about the accompanying non-fiction book, The Body Book.  I’m pretty particular about accuracy, so lack of precision tends to bug me unless it’s clearly acknowledged.  (Maybe that whole know-it-all thing?  Oops.)  And health/nutrition is my biggest area of interest, so I’ve done a lot of reading.

Sooo…with that said, I would prefer that it be pointed out that the estrogen/progesterone explanation toward the beginning of the book is an oversimplification.  (There are actually four major hormones that place significant roles in a woman’s monthly cycle.  A rise in progesterone doesn’t cause menstruation to begin; it’s actually the opposite.  A drop in progesterone causes menstruation to begin.)  And I am not particularly impressed with MyPlate, or any other government food-related recommendations, so I would personally have used different guidelines.  But that’s my nitpicking.  Overall, the book is a great overview of puberty and general good self-care.

I really, really hope that you are not just sticking this book on your daughter’s bed and expecting this to be her whole introduction to puberty.  I hope you’re talking to her about the changes she either is going through or will be going through!  But it’s a great review – and a great way for our girls to get reminders of healthy lifestyle choices from someone other than Mom or Dad.  (Sometimes they’re just more accepting of that sort of input when it’s not Mom or Dad saying so.)  My daughter is familiar with female adolescent changes – we’ve talked about them and we’ve done a class together – but when parts and pieces of the information she received aren’t immediately relevant, she can still forget (as we all do).  She found this a very helpful reminder of what we’ve already studied.

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Disclosure: Thomas Nelson provided us with copies of these books to facilitate our review.  They are also sponsoring this giveaway.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own (and those of my family).