CALLING THE MOON

Sixteen short stories and poems from well-known and award-winning authors explore how young people experience and celebrate their periods.

The protagonists in this excellent, accessible middle-grade collection are all tweens and teens who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color with different cultural and faith-based beliefs, traditions, and reservations about their periods. Christina Soontornvat’s sweet and funny opening story, “The Rules of the Lake,” places a sixth grader’s first period during a much-anticipated field trip to a lake. In Ibi Zoboi’s touching “Bloodline,” 12-year-old Adjoa participates in a New Moon Rebirth ceremony in which she receives a special gift passed down from mothers to daughters in her family. Erin Entrada Kelly’s “Mother Mary, Do You Bleed?” follows a Filipina American Catholic girl who contemplates whether Jesus’ mother also had her period. While most of the stories are heartwarming and emphasize renewal and rest, the authors also delve into how their characters deal with challenges like sexism, racism, microaggressions, immigration, religion, deadnaming (one character is nonbinary), addiction, divorce, and grief. Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s emotionally resonant “Ofrendas,” for example, features three sisters, 10, 12, and 13, reeling in the aftermath of their mother’s sudden death. This is a memorable anthology featuring uniformly strong entries from broadly diverse voices that delve into the subject matter in ways ideally suited to the target audience.

A powerful, vibrant, and empowering celebration of an important milestone.