Puberty (PEW-bur-tee). You say puberty with the most emphasis on the first part of the word, PEW. Puberty is the time in your life when your body is changing from a child's body into an adult's body.

Female Puberty Changes : A girls go through puberty, their breasts develop, and they begin to grow public hair, as well as hair on their underarms. They also get taller, and fat tissue begins to grow around their hips, thighs, and buttocks, giving their bodies a curvier shape. Our bodies change quite a bit as we go through puberty. We grow taller. Of course, we grow taller all throughout childhood. But, during puberty, a girl goes through a growth spurt. She grows taller, at a faster rate, than she evel will again.

There are a number of words in this book that we think you may not have heard before. When we first use these words, you'll find a pronunciation key at the bottom of the page. We will always use capital letter to indicate which part of the word to empgasize when you say it out loud. And we use "uh'' in the pronunciation guide to indicate the vowel sound that rhymes with the "uh'' in "huh''. See, for example, "vulva,;; "testicles,'' and "urethra''. Remember that you don't pronounce the "h'' in "uh''. We also use "ih'' to indicate the vowel sound that rhymes with the "e'' in "edit''.

During puberty the shape of our bodies changes. Our breasts begin to swell and to blossom out from our chests. Our hips and thighs get wider. We take on a more rounded, curvy shape. Soft nests of hair begin to grwo between our legs and under our arms. Our skin begins to make new oils, which change the very feel and smell of us. While these changes are happening on the outside of our bodies, other changes are happening on the inside.

For some girls, puberty seems to take forever. For others, these changes happen so fast they seem to take place overnight. They don't really happen that quickly, though. Puberty happens slowly and gradually, over a period of many months and years. The first changes may start when a girl is quite young, or may not begin until her teen years. No matter when puberty starts for you, we bet you'll have lots of questions about what's happening to your body. We hope this book will answer those questions.

"We'' are my daughter, Area, and I. The two of us worked together to write this book. We talked to doctors and read medical books. And we talked to many women and girls, too. They told us what happened to them during puberty, how they felt, and what questions they had. I teach classes in puberty, and together Area and I do workshops on puberty for kids and their parents. The kids in my classes and the mothers and daughters in our workshops alwats have lots of questions. They also have lots to say about puberty. Their quotes appear throughout these pages,* so, in a sense, they helped write this book.
* To protect their privacy, we changed the names of the girls and women who were kind enough to let us quote them.

I first began teaching puberty and sexuality classes back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth (well, nearly that long ago). Back then, sex education wasn't taught in very many schools. I had to invent my lesson plans from scratch. I decided to start off my very first class by explaining how babies are made. This seemed like a good place to begin. After all, during puberty, your body is getting ready for a time in your life when you may decide to have a baby.

I didn't think I'd have any problems teaching that first class. "Nothing to it,'' I told myself. "I'll just go in there and start by talking to the kids about how babies are made. No problem.'' Bou, was I wrong! "id hardly opened my mouth before the class went crazy. Kids were giggling, nudging each other, and getting red in the face. One boy even fell off his chair. The class was acting weird because to talk about how babies are made, I had to talk about sex. Sex, as you may have noticed, is a very big deal. People often act embarrassed. giggly, or strange when the topic of sex comes up.