PERIOD PIECES

A collection of stories about the onset of menstruation by some very well-known female writers for young people. What surprises in this gathering is the overwhelming sense of embarrassment and ignorance about the arrival of monthly courses. Linda Sue Park writes with great wit about her first—and last—pair of white pants, and what happened to them. Cynthia Leitich Smith tells of the kindly cowboy, barely older than she, who rescues her from fear of heights on horseback and from being caught on said horse with no supplies or nearby bathroom. A wonderful and tender tale of Mercedes, who misses her dead mother and her promised celebration for “becoming a woman,” ends with Mercedes finding in her father the support she needs. Uma Krishnaswami’s story ties three generations of Indian women to the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan and a silver bangle that marks that first period. Perhaps most moving of all, Rita Williams-Garcia allows Lucy Ray to save Dorinda the Freedom Rider from menstrual distress in jail in the South in 1968, but not in the way Lucy Ray expects. There’s no sex, and little discussion of the purpose of menstruation. Instead, these stories illuminate the feelings of that first time in a very straightforward way. Don’t let the subtitle fool you—boys intrigued by the workings of the female mind and body will be intrigued, too. (Short stories. 9-13)