User:Mark1958

Show Me! is a controversial

AIDS

epidemic.

Background

While many parents appreciated Show Me! for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their

obscene

.

However, starting in

First Amendment

protection, its enemies would have likely renewed and expanded their court challenges). Used copies remain freely available, though at inflated prices.

Reviews

Recent

A recent review by Dr. Russell A. Rohde claims that the book, "appropriately delves into the issues of breast feeding, adolescence, pubertal changes, menses, sexual anatomies, pregnancy, masturbation, contraception, sexual behavioral disturbances and venereal disease. [...] I am not aware of any book comparable to this illustrated primer that fills the needs of sexual education so well."

D. F. Janssen, in Growing Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities (Oct., 2002) [2], places it at one extreme of a late 20th c. visual and textual revolution that enabled parents to illustrate information that up to that time had been transmitted orally. He sees the work as subversive not for its "too frank" portrayal of childhood sexuality but for the primacy that image takes over text. In his eyes, the work "comes out of a culture with a long history of pathologising so-addressed primal scenes," a history that became manifest in particular with regard to the works of Will McBride.

From 1975

Show Me! received mixed reviews from the mass media when it was first published. The

New York Times, called the book a "child-abusive joke." The 13-year-old daughter of Chicago Tribune

reviewer Carol Kleiman perhaps summed it up best:

I'm too old for it myself. The last part, tho, with no pictures, looks interesting to read. The book is good for little kids because they don't know what society terms "dirty" yet. You know, Mom, it's parents I'm worried about. They're not ready yet.

Show Me! in the News

In July 2006, Judge John K. Reilly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania cleared Richard Whittman Barker of pornography charges for possessing a copy of Show Me! State troopers had found the book while searching Mr. Barker's home.

Bibliographic details

1974: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern Foreword by Helmut Kentler. Wuppertal
1975: Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-72275-3
1990: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (2nd. ed.) 195 p. Wuppertal: Hammer. ISBN 3-87294-301-4
1995: Zeig Mal Mehr (5 ed.). 176 p. Beltz. ISBN 3-407-85106-5