In 1975 and 1976, obscenity charges were brought against the publisher or booksellers by prosecutors in Massachusetts,[1] New Hampshire,[2] Oklahoma, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

[4][5][6] However, starting in 1977, some states began to criminalize the distribution of even non-obscene so-called "child pornography," or "images of abuse," which arguably is not protected by the First Amendment.

[7] In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision, New York v. Ferber,[8] which allowed the government to constitutionally ban the knowing distribution of even non-obscene "child pornography".

was not pornographic, they could no longer afford the legal expenses to defend it, and they did not want to risk criminal prosecutions of their own personnel and/or vendors who sold the book.

was not the direct subject of the Ferber case, but the book was prominently featured by both sides in the litigation, and it played a significant role in the oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.

[10] In its country of origin, Germany, the book first won several awards, even from church organisations, but due to rising pressure from a newly arising "moral majority" the publishers and McBride decided to take it off the market in 1996.

The Los Angeles Times called the photographs "beautiful...graceful, charming, and elegant," yet accurately predicted, in a severe understatement of what actually happened, that the book "may start (an) uproar.

"[17] D. F. Janssen places it at the one extreme of a late 20th-century visual and textual revolution that enabled parents to illustrate information that up to that time had been transmitted orally.

Among them, Peter Mayle's «Where Did I Come From?» [uk] compared versus Will McBride's «Show Me!», highlighting issues and good sides of each book in textual part and in visual illustration.