You Should be Ashamed!

Question:

I am writing this email assuming this goes directly to the author of the “Alice” books. My 1st grade daughter accidentally received this book at a book sale at her school. Thankfully I looked through this book, I can not recall the exact title since I have returned it to the school. I was appalled and disgusted at what trash you are writing for young girls. I could not believe my eyes that the words sex, foreplay, Playboy, intercourse, among others, were in this book designed ACCORDING TO YOU for 11 to 14 year old girls. You must not have children, especially daughters, because I can’t imagine why you would want to teach them such things at a young age to take away their innocence. These book would be more fit for an adult, if fit at all, than for a child. Being a mother of two girls, I can say that you should be ashamed that you are part of what media is trying to do to girls in this way. I am shocked your “series” of books was ever even published. What mother would want her child reading this filth? I pray that your books will never again reach girls at this young age to corrupt them.

Phyllis replied:

Since your daughter is only six, I can understand that you  might not be able to imagine her as an eleven or a fourteen-year-old whose body is changing and has probably already started her menstrual periods.  But having received letters from girls this age for the past twenty-five years, I can assure you that most of them think about sex far more than you could dream.  Some have already experienced sexual intercourse and not, I believe, because Alice has urged them to do it.  But what girl who is becoming a woman should NOT know how babies are conceived?  Why should they not know that intercourse is not just a mechanical act,  but that it involves tenderness and consideration and foreplay?  Which girl has not seen or heard of Playboy?  If you found Alice the Brave upsetting, then the other books in the series, as Alice grows older, will be even more shocking to you, I’m sure.  The books weren’t meant to shock,  but to enlighten, and no, I am not in the least ashamed.  I can assure you that I have the full support of my publisher.  I truly hope that when your daughter is eleven or twelve or fourteen, she will find an adult or a book that will fully answer her questions and help prepare her for a loving and pleasurable relationship later on.