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Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents
In English and German
175 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
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626 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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September 7, 2024This will cost you at least 100 € via internet from second hand bookstores.
Many years out of print. But the legend – at least with some people – lives on.
I think it's obvious why nobody starts a new edition. It would be legally inflicted with charges concerning pedophelia, nowadays.
I too have no copy and never had. My infomation is also second hand.
There have been times in Western Germany when the book was praised for liberation, for a new understanding of sexuality as a part of lives of all people, including prepubescent children of both sexes.
You can see how times change when you look at Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a veteran politican of German Greens Party and member of the European Parliament. A very rhetoric guy. Mixed French, German and Jew, redhaired. Once he stood for the student rebellion movement of 1968. Later he was accused in German media for being an fan of pedophilia.
Once – and in fact quite a long time – there has been a famous magazine für younger people in West Germany, the in-crowd, the hipsters of that day, the liberated students, the protest generation, called: TWEN.
It always had a more or less bare chested girl on its cover.
Losing their blouses with the passing of the sixties. Magazine was filled with more or less intelligent journalism about „young“ culture. Jazz, Pop, Blues, they also sold records, Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, nude Danish women, books by Updike, Mailer, Baldwin and Gore Vidal, Interviews with Che – or at least Dany Cohn-Bendit, Rainer Langhans and Rudi Dutschke. If you remember the name: Joachim Ernst Berendt, he made you familiar with Mingus. Willy Brandt was the hippest politician. State of the art graphics and design. Layouts by Willy Fleckhaus, who also designed Suhrkamp literary high-brow publishing house. Or Heinz Edelmann, who also designed Beatles cartoons in „Yellow Submarine“.
In fact it was read by teachers, civil servants and uncool clerks who never got the teenager girls they deserved. Let us taste a bit of wild, wild Germany we couldn't see if we left our houses.
All along the way they had a very clever American photographer, Will McBride, living in West Berlin. His b&w photography set the pace. He did everything, Adenauer, Romy Schneider, motorcycles. But as soon as he could get in close contact with really young and swinging people he felt like a genius and showed it. It seems he really believed in this generation - which no longer was his own. He was married and had some kids, boys. It seems years passed and he didn't notice that he had this special thing with young boys. Though his pictures showed it. These boys got younger by the passing years, starting around 25 and reaching 14 in the end. As an old men he lived a certain time with a mentally unstable end-teenager. He also photographed his own sons naked while they were teenagers. It was cool in those days.
Once he came across old German photos of people in cardboard boxes and stole the idea for Twen. Like every artist he stole all the time. He had success. Then the idea was born to do a book for familys with kids showing sex as a nice, human way of leisure und community. And by the way leading children into the know of some seldom bepoken facts of everyday life. („ein Aufklärungsbuch“)
This resulted in the book „Zeig mal“ (Show me) (it features in deed little boys of under 10 showing their penis to one another, as in reality once may have been the case). And it features a lot paper boxes with naked bodies of more or less beautiful people in them. Posing as families and all kinds of relatives including gay uncles and lesbian aunties.
You see, it was flower power and love every day of your life. It was welcomed at the day. The later parts of McBride's career didn't feature in German mass media anymore. The living with gay teenagers doing drugs and dressing in drag. But there are a lot books out now about his work.
In the meantime, him being dead, died at a high age, his name ist paired with the word BOYS, which might get to be his niche in art history. (But not in the sense of 8 and 11 years old, which might be your impression after „Zeig mal!“) Well, anyway, the more conservative and right-wing Germany of these days has chosen to have forgotten him. No one needs these books anymore.
We're already enlighted and our children are safe and sane.
Many years out of print. But the legend – at least with some people – lives on.
I think it's obvious why nobody starts a new edition. It would be legally inflicted with charges concerning pedophelia, nowadays.
I too have no copy and never had. My infomation is also second hand.
There have been times in Western Germany when the book was praised for liberation, for a new understanding of sexuality as a part of lives of all people, including prepubescent children of both sexes.
You can see how times change when you look at Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a veteran politican of German Greens Party and member of the European Parliament. A very rhetoric guy. Mixed French, German and Jew, redhaired. Once he stood for the student rebellion movement of 1968. Later he was accused in German media for being an fan of pedophilia.
Once – and in fact quite a long time – there has been a famous magazine für younger people in West Germany, the in-crowd, the hipsters of that day, the liberated students, the protest generation, called: TWEN.
It always had a more or less bare chested girl on its cover.
Losing their blouses with the passing of the sixties. Magazine was filled with more or less intelligent journalism about „young“ culture. Jazz, Pop, Blues, they also sold records, Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, nude Danish women, books by Updike, Mailer, Baldwin and Gore Vidal, Interviews with Che – or at least Dany Cohn-Bendit, Rainer Langhans and Rudi Dutschke. If you remember the name: Joachim Ernst Berendt, he made you familiar with Mingus. Willy Brandt was the hippest politician. State of the art graphics and design. Layouts by Willy Fleckhaus, who also designed Suhrkamp literary high-brow publishing house. Or Heinz Edelmann, who also designed Beatles cartoons in „Yellow Submarine“.
In fact it was read by teachers, civil servants and uncool clerks who never got the teenager girls they deserved. Let us taste a bit of wild, wild Germany we couldn't see if we left our houses.
All along the way they had a very clever American photographer, Will McBride, living in West Berlin. His b&w photography set the pace. He did everything, Adenauer, Romy Schneider, motorcycles. But as soon as he could get in close contact with really young and swinging people he felt like a genius and showed it. It seems he really believed in this generation - which no longer was his own. He was married and had some kids, boys. It seems years passed and he didn't notice that he had this special thing with young boys. Though his pictures showed it. These boys got younger by the passing years, starting around 25 and reaching 14 in the end. As an old men he lived a certain time with a mentally unstable end-teenager. He also photographed his own sons naked while they were teenagers. It was cool in those days.
Once he came across old German photos of people in cardboard boxes and stole the idea for Twen. Like every artist he stole all the time. He had success. Then the idea was born to do a book for familys with kids showing sex as a nice, human way of leisure und community. And by the way leading children into the know of some seldom bepoken facts of everyday life. („ein Aufklärungsbuch“)
This resulted in the book „Zeig mal“ (Show me) (it features in deed little boys of under 10 showing their penis to one another, as in reality once may have been the case). And it features a lot paper boxes with naked bodies of more or less beautiful people in them. Posing as families and all kinds of relatives including gay uncles and lesbian aunties.
You see, it was flower power and love every day of your life. It was welcomed at the day. The later parts of McBride's career didn't feature in German mass media anymore. The living with gay teenagers doing drugs and dressing in drag. But there are a lot books out now about his work.
In the meantime, him being dead, died at a high age, his name ist paired with the word BOYS, which might get to be his niche in art history. (But not in the sense of 8 and 11 years old, which might be your impression after „Zeig mal!“) Well, anyway, the more conservative and right-wing Germany of these days has chosen to have forgotten him. No one needs these books anymore.
We're already enlighted and our children are safe and sane.
July 27, 2008
Holy smokes, no stone is left unturned in this book. By the time you and your horrified children are finished they will be completely clear about how sex works emotionally and most definitely how it works physically.
CRYSTAL CLEAR. Big black and white photographs display the sex act from angles no non-porn star will ever see.
Seriously, I hate to say what the pictures in this would look like out of context, because it's pretty bad.
I give Show Me five stars.
Here's the breakdown
1. Star for 1970s free love nostalgia.
2. Along the same lines, one star for goody goody vibe throughout
despite centerfolds of giant lumpy scrotums. Education!
3. Another star for just how freaking completely over the top this
book is.
4. A fourth star for portraying the older generation as busy bodies, squares,
grumps and worst of all sexual prudites!!
5. Last, this freaked out bunch of naive, awwh shucks -kiddie porn was
my wife's sex ed book when she was 8.
And if nothing else a great conversation piece when entertaining.
(Actually, I only advise displaying this book to guests if they are my
friends. Not like my friends, but the actual persons
in my life. I can't promise as to how a sane person would react.)
CRYSTAL CLEAR. Big black and white photographs display the sex act from angles no non-porn star will ever see.
Seriously, I hate to say what the pictures in this would look like out of context, because it's pretty bad.
I give Show Me five stars.
Here's the breakdown
1. Star for 1970s free love nostalgia.
2. Along the same lines, one star for goody goody vibe throughout
despite centerfolds of giant lumpy scrotums. Education!
3. Another star for just how freaking completely over the top this
book is.
4. A fourth star for portraying the older generation as busy bodies, squares,
grumps and worst of all sexual prudites!!
5. Last, this freaked out bunch of naive, awwh shucks -kiddie porn was
my wife's sex ed book when she was 8.
And if nothing else a great conversation piece when entertaining.
(Actually, I only advise displaying this book to guests if they are my
friends. Not like my friends, but the actual persons
in my life. I can't promise as to how a sane person would react.)
March 21, 2021
My oh-so-trying-to-be-hip parents had this lying around the house for perusal when I was a little kid. No guidance, no discussion of emotions. It was all about free love in my messed up childhood home that felt like living in a commune. This book scarred me for life.
Please don't present this book to your kids without some serious opportunity for discussion.
Please don't present this book to your kids without some serious opportunity for discussion.
October 8, 2021
My uncle gave me this book years ago as a x-mas present & I loved it. Unfortunately during one of my many moves, it seems to have disappeared and I would love to get another one. Can someone tell me where I can get this wonderful book?
January 23, 2010
Probably the most significant book since the Bible, and nowhere near so offensive. Recommended!
September 14, 2022
I only flipped through this book at a book store, but thought it was a beautiful and thoughtful book.
It is very frank with pictures that show detail. As I was in college, poor, and had no need for books for children, I did not buy it. Years later I wished I had a copy.
It is very frank with pictures that show detail. As I was in college, poor, and had no need for books for children, I did not buy it. Years later I wished I had a copy.
June 29, 2008
So very Freudian...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews