Developing the USA Girls’ Puberty Book

After capturing the voiced experiences and perspectives of girls across the USA, including diverse groups of low-income and immigrant adolescent girls in NYC, Chicago, and LA, and “first period stories” from adolescent girls across 25 states, we were ready to begin drafting the content book was filled with girls’ own stories, questions and language, and presented in a way that would appeal to an audience of American young people. Based on their immense popularity, we decided that a graphic novel approach was the way to go!

First, we wrote up the draft content of the book, weaving in basic puberty, periods and other growing up advice alongside of the learning collected directly from American girls. We reviewed all the stories we’d collected, and settled on eight to include in the book that we thought would provide a of the USA girl’s puberty book! 

Developing the content for any of our puberty books is always a multi-step process, combining the inputs gathered from girls and the adults in their lives, such as teachers, school counselors and coaches, alongside of factual puberty content. We wanted to be sure our new USA girl's puberty book captured a range of experiences so all girls could relate as they read it!

Next, we hired a wonderful illustrator and graphic designer: Emily Scheffler of Miniscule Studios. Emily transformed the eight stories into brilliant short graphic novel-type tales, and developed colorful fun illustrations for the rest of the book. We consulted with a former puberty educator of girls in US schools, who provided great suggestions to make sure the tone, style and reading level of the book would be just right for our target audience of 9–13-year-olds!

Soon enough, we had fully illustrated draft copies of the book in our hands. All that remained was to content test the draft book directly with girls, parents, teachers, and other adults in girls’ lives!