By way of our friend, Kim Michele Richardson, I was alerted to a soon-to-be-released children’s book by New York prosecutor, Jill Starishevsky.  The twenty-two line rhyming picture book, MY BODY, was inspired at the intersection of Ms. Starishevsky’s work in the the Bronx District Attorney’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Office and a moment of revelation at the end of an Oprah episode.  A case came Ms. Starishevky’s way, that of a young girl who had been raped repeatedly by her stepfather for over three years.  The child saw Oprah Winfrey look into the camera at the end of an episode and say, “If you’re being abused, tell a parent or a teacher.”  So she did, the very next day.

Ms. Starishevsky was affected by this powerful result, being able to prosecute a monster, from such a simple directive.  Tell somebody.

As most books on abuse are directed at older children and adults, she was compelled to compose one offering younger children, aged three to eight, simple words and pictures to impress upon them that “NO!” is perfectly acceptable when it comes to their bodies.

The idea was well received for twenty-one of the twenty-two lines, but when Ms. Starishevsky wrote one direct reference to the character’s abuse, the publisher balked.  In fact, several publishers shied away.  But to talk around it, to resist clarity, as the author saw it, was part of the problem and part of the shame and avoidance that has lead to only one in ten children reporting their abuser to an authority.  So, Ms. Starishevsky decided to publish the book herself, as is.

MY BODY is available for pre-order at http://www.howsmynanny.com/mybodybook/

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under *Jamie's Posts, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.