Some years ago, a woman named Rachel Kauder Nalebuff approached me about doing an essay about my first period for a book she wanted to have published. She told me it was going to be about women's first periods, about a lot of different women's personal experiences, to be shared with anybody who wanted to learn about it, deal with their own first times, and discover this happens to a lot of people in different ways. She didn't have a publisher at the time, but she was positive that she would find one. Talking to her, I believed she would find one, too, so I wrote a short essay about my own first period, from when my mother still had a grip on things and had taught me what to expect.



MY LITTLE RED BOOK was published in February 2009.

It's a great book, for girls just learning about menstruation and for women looking to see what kinds of experience other women had when they encountered this particular step toward adulthood. You also get to see a new face of a favorite author: Rachel got writers like Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Cecily von Zeigesar, Meg Cabot, and me to contribute. There are stories from all over the world and over the last seventy years, showing how times and attitudes change.

Give it to a friend for her birthdays, bridal, or baby shower. Give it to a mom who helped you through those first strange days, or the girlfriend who gave you a better way to look at it. Give it to a guy who's just moved in with his first girlfriend, or a young father with his first daughter. Take the last shame off our periods!