Pride Month

This book shows that it doesn’t matter what your family looks like, the only thing that makes a family a family, is love! Each page showcases bright illustrations of diverse families doing special activities together, from baking a cake to finding a lost shoe. Your little one will love looking through the pages to see their own family reflected, and of course feel the love your family shares together.

This gorgeous Stonewall Award-winning picture book stars Julián, a child coming to understand their gender nonconformity after a joyful encounter with three women dressed as shimmering mermaids. Julián fantasizes about dressing up like a mermaid too, and wonders what his Abuela will make of it in this celebration of self-love and individuality.

Young readers can now learn the momentous and inspiring story of the Gay Pride Flag, created in 1978 by social activist Harvey Milk and designer Gilbert Baker. More than a history, Pride vibrantly illuminates the reach and timelessness of the rainbow flag, a global symbol of equality and inclusion.

Pride author Rob Sanders adds another title to the LGBTQ+ historical canon with Stonewall, the moving story of the 1969 police raid and ensuing protests that played a crucial role in the gay civil rights movement. Narrated by the Stonewall Inn itself, this accessible and empowering book is an essential piece of pride history.

This adorable, award-winning book takes place at a Pride parade. It’s written in rhyme, so it’s extra cute. It talks about who you’ll see at Pride and who is invited—everyone! My students love pointing out the bright colors and costumes, as well as giggling at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It’s really just a joy to read.

Red: A Crayon’s Story is one of my all-time favorite books. It shows the experience of a transgender child through the metaphor of crayons. A blue crayon has a red wrapper, and everyone around the crayon keeps trying to get the crayon to draw red things—fire engines, strawberries—but everything comes out blue. Eventually another crayon acknowledges and appreciates that this crayon is actually blue. All the other crayons soon realize this too and begin celebrating the blueness of the crayon. The concept is so simply laid out that from the first page, my students began to yell, “No! Not red, blue!”

Quite often, the experiences of Indigenous LGBTQ+ people are overlooked in children’s literature. 47,000 Beads is here to change that! Peyton is a child who loves to dance, but when the annual pow-wow comes around, this year Peyton doesn’t want to wear the jingle dress that girls wear. Auntie Eyota reaches out to the entire community to help Peyton feel loved and welcomed as a Two-Spirit member of their nation. Everyone pitches in and makes a beautiful new pow-wow regalia, perfect for Peyton.

In this book about gender exploration, a young South Asian child is fascinated by his mother’s bindi. When he seeks to know more about them, his mother gives him a bindi to wear. The child feels more authentically themself and connected to their culture. This story lets children look at the way we connect gender and culture in uplifting, kid-friendly language. Quite the gem!

I adore this book because it shows a positive family dynamic shift when Aidan comes out to his parents as a transgender boy. Rather than simply stopping the book once Aidan and his family make changes, it moves forward to show Aidan’s family growing. Aidan worries about gender being placed on his unborn sibling and begins to help his family make choices that will allow that sibling to flourish, no matter how they identify. It teaches the moral that the most important thing about taking care of a child is knowing how to love them, just the way they are.

At school, they tell Stella to bring her mother in to celebrate mother's day. But Stella doesn't have a mother- she has two dads. She decides to bring her dads instead and discovers that her family extends even further than just her two parents.

This book is funny and sweet and refutes gender roles. Worm loves Worm and they decide to get married. Lots of other bugs intervene, explaining that it isn’t a wedding without cake (even though worms don’t eat cake), or rings (even though worms don’t have fingers), or one groom and one bride. The excuse is: “That’s the way it’s always been done.” But Worm and Worm decide that they’ll both be the groom and both be the bride. They rebuff criticisms that it’s “not how it’s done” with: “It’s how we’re doing it now.” All sorts of families will value the message of cherishing loved ones in a way you both want, regardless of what has always been done.

With clarity and insight, Jazz Jennings shares her story of realizing at a very young age that, though she was being raised as a boy, she was truly a girl. An essential read for children and families of all experiences, I Am Jazz has an empowering message of celebrating what makes us unique and respecting everyone’s differences.