Book review: The Ultimate Guys' Body Book by Walt Larimore

American Girl has a pair of girls' guides to puberty that Faith loved.  Finding an equivalent for boys was a more difficult task.  I picked up a couple that I felt went quite a bit too far for eleven-year-olds.  Finally, I decided to try this book, The Ultimate Guys' Body Book by Dr. Walt Larimore, the seventeenth book I read in 2017.

Arranged as a series of thirty questions ostensibly posed by a stand-in for the reader, the text is accompanied by friendly, cartoon-style illustrations.  This is not a sex-ed book, so there are no anatomical drawings; the most explicit art depicts a boy staring down the waistband of his boxers (for question 18: "Is having only one testicle okay?").  The largest part of the book deals with the seminal question of adolescence -- Am I normal? -- and gives a comforting answer of "almost certainly."  

It also covers basic health questions about sleep, obesity, hygiene, and (oddly to me, as a former teen girl -- must be a guy thing) how to get buff.   Larimore writes from a Christian perspective, so he comes down strongly against extramarital sex and pornography, cautiously against tattoos and piercings, and reassuringly neutral on masturbation.   There are Scripture quotations in every chapter, some of which are a bit tenuous (in particular, referencing Jabez's prayer to enlarge his territory in the chapter on growth spurts), but also hilariously including Psalm 38:7 in the chapter on jock itch.

I hope that this can serve the purpose with Eric that American Girl's Care and Keeping of You books did with Faith: something for him to use as a private reference as he begins the process of puberty without dumping too many extraneous worries on him.