Hou Xixi Xixi itibaren Aschaffenburg itibaren Aschaffenburg

This books is highly entertaining from cover to cover, but it earns its five star rating because of one specific scene, involving an unfortunate incident in the bathroom at a dinner party. I laughed so hard I cried, then I called my brother and read it aloud to him.

It's nice to read a coming-of-age book aimed at girls for a change - there are obvious reasons why I have read many for boys and few for girls. This one was recommended to me by a "100 books you must read" kind of list that cropped up somewhere along the way, so there must be a good following for this particular tale, which is justly deserved. However, I personally avoid making statements such as "ever girl should read this book", because everyone male or female would benefit from discovering more about the other. Thankfully my own parents did a good job of ignoring gender divides and I was just as well versed in menstrual cycles as I was in wet dreams long before I even got to high school. I say thankfully because the level of sexual education in this country is abismal. Aside from all this, the book does a good job of fair representation instead of gender-typing, which is important when the target audience will garnish a lot from such a short text. Of course there are still the everyday expectations of girls of boys that are used throughout, but these flaws are set far away from the focus of the tale: Margaret's own confusion as she hits puberty. My own family has always discussed otherwise 'private' matters very openly and there is a lot about Margaret's story which is shared (however generically) by my own sister. As with Secret Men's Business, this book does a good job of simply discussing the internal doubts that appear along with puberty. I believe the point of any coming-of-age book targeted at kids in the thick of it all is simply to show how normal their unique struggles are. Indeed, for this audience there would be little gained by trying to wage war on the social construction of gender... it's just a shame that nobody writing for older teens will not take up the cause. Overall though, this is a simple and considerate little book that would no doubt be beneficial to young girls who are confronting the same problems and wondering if they're actually normal.