When American Girl’s book “The Care and Keeping of You” was published 20 years ago, it was an immediate bestseller and the company was overwhelmed with letters from young girls thankful for the book. We talk to the executive editor at American Girl and the author of the guide. We also learn about problems of truancy that some Wisconsin schools are facing and how they’re choosing to deal with it. And, we hear why the head of the FDA is calling the teen use of e-cigarettes an epidemic.
Featured in this Show
-
Amid FDA Crackdown On E-Cigarettes, Neenah Proposes All-Out Ban For Minors
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday, Sept. 12, it may pull electronic cigarettes off the shelves if manufacturers and retailers don’t take steps to reverse the signs that youth vaping has reached “epidemic proportion.”
The city of Neenah is taking matters into its own hands. City officials have proposed an ordinance that would ban the possession or use of all e-cigarettes by minors in the city. Current state law only bans minors from using e-cigarettes that contain nicotine.
“It’s next to impossible for law enforcement to tell if minors are vaping with nicotine,” said Adam VandenHeuvel, assistant city attorney of Neenah. “We have to have a way to get some teeth behind the law.“
The FDA ordered five e-cigarette companies to submit plans within 60 days proving they can curb teen use of the devices and sent warning letters to more than 1,300 retailers who are selling e-cigarettes to minors.
“This is a huge deal,” said Doug Jorenby, director of clinical services for the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
“This is really the first time that the FDA has used any of that authority (Tobacco Control Act) to draw a line in the sand if you will,” Jorenby said.
Since 2009, the FDA has had the authority to regulate tobacco through the so-called “deeming rule,” and in 2016 that was updated to include e-cigarettes.
The speed that e-cigarettes caught on among teenagers has largely taken the public health and science community by surprise, Jorenby said. High schoolers are nearly four times as likely to use e-cigarettes than adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In terms of old-school smoking, we actually have been making progress in the last decade or so,” he said. “But then e-cigarettes did appear … really I’m ashamed to say as a public health person and scientific researcher, out of the blue … and they have completely reversed that trend.”
School is where it’s really taken off, VandenHeuvel said.
Neenah school officials say it began as a problem last year and continued to increase as the school year went on, he said.
Much of the call to action has come from educators who have seen how quickly e-cigarettes have grown in popularity – and the changing devices, Jorenby said.
“They resemble kind of a large USB drive … they also don’t produce as much vapor,” he said. “These are fairly discrete in terms of the amount of vapor that’s exhaled when someone uses it.”
About 3 percent of adults use e-cigarettes, Jorenby said. For middle schoolers, it rises to about 4 percent, but then jumps to 11 percent for high schoolers.
And the majority of teens don’t realize whether there’s nicotine in them, he said.
“It’s shocking when, you know, adolescents are surveyed,” Jorenby said. “Close to 60 percent of them don’t necessarily realize that there’s nicotine in what they’re vaping, even when it does contain that and is labeled as such.“
While state law prohibits retailers from selling vaping liquid that contains nicotine to minors, they are still getting their hands on it, VandenHeuvel said.
The majority of adults who use e-cigarettes started with traditional cigarettes, and often continue to use them side by side, Jorenby said. Yet, among teens who have never smoked cigarettes, using e-cigarettes made them four times as likely to start using cigarettes.
“There’s a clear trend that we’ve seen here that these actually are a gateway to using old school cigarettes, with all of the negative health effects that come with those,” Jorenby said.
VandenHeuvel said companies are deliberately targeting kids and trying to hook them on their product by offering flavored e-juice like fruit and candy.
All of the major international tobacco companies have acquired at least one e-cigarette company, Jorenby said.
“I find it really hard to imagine somebody that’s, you know, used to smoking a pack a day of Camels or Marlboros, you know, picking up a crème brûlée flavor pod,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem to track very well.”
Neenah’s ordinance will go before the common council Wednesday where VandenHeuvel expects it to pass.
-
How Schools Are Cracking Down On Truant Students
School districts across the U.S. are coming up with new carrot-and-stick approaches to deal with students cutting class. We look at the scope of the problem and what schools are doing to boost attendance.
-
American Girl's Classic Puberty Book For Girls Celebrates 20 Years
The classic puberty book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” from American Girl that taught a generation of girls to feel comfortable about their changing bodies turned 20 years old this month.
Photo courtesy of American GirlFrom basic hygiene to how to shave for the first time to buying your first bra, the book for 8- to 10-year-old girls — which released a later edition for girls 10 and older — has sold more than 5 million copies.
“We had a sense that there was a need for this book,” said Valorie Lee Schaefer, the author of the book. “I don’t think until we published we realized that there was a hunger for it.”
The idea to write a book came from girls, said Barbara Stretchberry, executive editor at American Girl. At the time, American Girl was publishing a magazine with an advice column called Help.
“We were getting thousands and thousands of letters from girls, and for all kinds of topics, but what we were seeing a lot were topics about changing bodies and self-esteem and body image and really wanting to understand how this change was going to affect them,” she said.
Those girls guided the evolution of the book, Schaefer said.
“(We) fixed in our mind a 10-year-old girl … holding that girl in her mind and in our heart was really our guiding star through the development of the book,” she said.
To do that, they formed focus groups of girls in that age group — mostly a loose collection of girls and mothers who worked at American Girl — to get a sense of their interests and questions so that they could meet them where they were, Schaefer said.
When it came to actually writing the book, Schaefer said the tone needed to respect the girls and honor this time of transition in their lives.
“We said to ourselves … ‘Our voice is that of a favorite beloved aunt,’” she said. “Somebody who’s not your mother or father, but somebody who you trust, somebody who you think is maybe just a little bit cooler than your mom.”
In 2012, American Girl published “The Care and Keeping of You 2,” for girls 10 and older and in 2017, a book for the boys, “Guy Stuff: The Body Book for Boys.”
Some of the most enthusiastic responses to the books have come from parents. Stretchberry said moms tell her they read the book with their daughter, then pass it on to other moms.
But Schaefer’s favorite letters have come from fathers.
“Fathers who’ve said, ‘I’m a single dad’ or ‘I’m a divorced dad and my daughter is becoming a more private person and I want her to feel like she can talk to me about whatever is on her mind and this book has really helped me feel comfortable having a conversation with her,’” she said.
The books continue to resonate with youth today because puberty is a universal experience, Schaefer said.
And for young girls especially, puberty is a sensitive subject, and something they may feel very private or even embarrassed about, she said. A book offers the information she needs, when she’s ready to receive it.
“We hope that by giving them language and by giving them a little bit of courage that they can have these conversations,” she said.
-
Classic Puberty Book For Girls Turns 20
The Care And Keeping Of You Turns 20 years old this month and has sold more than 5.1 million copies since its original release. Covering topics ranging from self esteem to properly inserting a tampon, the book continues to be a source of reassurance for young girls. We talk to the book’s author and the American Girl’s executive editor about how the book was created and where its going now.
-
A Look At The FDA's Vaping Warning Regarding Teen 'Epidemic'
The Food and Drug Administration says it may pull electronic cigarettes off shelves if manufacturers fail to curb the growing use by teenagers. Meanwhile, the city of Neenah is considering an ordinance that would ban vaping by teens. We discuss the risks associated with e-cigarettes among young people and the push to limit the products’ use.
Episode Credits
- Rob Ferrett Host
- Bill Martens Producer
- Natalie Guyette Producer
- Doug Jorenby Guest
- Tawnell Hobbs Guest
- Valorie Lee Schaefer Guest
- Barbara Stretchberry Guest
Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.
