On the rag. Surfing the crimson wave. A visit from Aunt Flo. Shark Week. Whatever you like to call your Red Badge of Courage, there’s gonna be a book about it. In a press release sent exclusively to Bustle on Tuesday morning, Penguin Young Readers announced that Naama Bloom, the founder and CEO of HelloFlo.com, will publish There Will Be Blood: The HelloFlo Guide to Puberty with Dutton Children's Books. The book is slated for a 2017 release, and with it, hopefully 12-year-old girls around the world will have way fewer head-scratching questions.
There Will Be Blood, which Bloom is writing with TheLi.st co-founder Glynnis MacNicol, "will incorporate real-life stories along with facts and illustrations" to help guide "a new generation of young readers and their families" through puberty's dangerous terrain.
Bloom writes:
The HelloFlo Guide to Puberty is about the blood. It is about clots, and discharge, and awkwardly placed pubic hair. It is about messiness. It is about talking about the confusion of puberty, and all the things happening to our bodies, or what will happen, in an open and honest way. There are no pastels in the HelloFlo world. No blue dyes either. There is no embarrassment. There are no hushed voices. There are gifs, there are Instagrams, there is #TamponLiberation, and period parties, and bushes, and lack of bushes, and blood. We celebrate puberty here and also try to be funny. Puberty is not a curse. It’s confusing, uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but also interesting and ultimately powerful and empowering.
Bloom and MacNicol are consulting with a panel of experts to write There Will Be Blood, but Bloom herself knows what she's talking about when it comes to women's health: HelloFlo.com, which began as a monthly delivery service for "fem care products," evolved into a company that "offer[s] one-of-a-kind care packages to help women and girls through transitional times in their life."
It sounds like There Will Be Blood will be an inspirational read — even for those of us who've come out the other side of puberty (relatively) unscathed.
Image: Herbstrose/Pixabay
