Listen to this Book of Life Podcast Where Heidi Rabinowitz and I Interview Each Other About Jewish Kidlit and LGBTQIA2+ Kidlit

I loved this discussion, and was so honored to partner with Heidi as part of the Through the Window diversity exchange.

Here's the description of that program:

Through the Window is a diversity exchange created by the Association of Jewish Libraries to fight antisemitism and other forms of bias through education and allyship. Jewish organizations swap content with other marginalized communities to give both groups a look through the window at our common humanity.

I'm also really delighted that Heidi created an opportunity for us to "use our privilege constructively to boost Black voices," and we've both done so with some recommendations of powerful works by Black creators, which starts the episode off.

Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

Las Niñas Pueden Ser Reyes (Girls Can Be Kings) - A Coloring Book I Wish I'd Had When I Was a Little Kid

Las Niñas Pueden Ser Reyes by Jacinta Bunnell, translated into Spanish by Fernanda Siles

This new Spanish translation of Jacinta Bunnell’s feminist coloring book Girls Are Not Chicks features 32 pages of girl power fun, translated by Nicaraguan educator, Fernanda Siles. Every day we hear on the news stories of Latinx folks here in the U.S. and those south of the U.S. border being recipients of brutal hostility and violence. At the same time, we see these same communities courageously risking everything so that they and their children can thrive. We see young Latinx people organize despite this repression, many of them young girls. I am so inspired by their mobilization. I offer this book as a token of love and appreciation that celebrates these brave and powerful activists, educators and communities of care. The title in English of this book is Girls Can Be Kings.

Measures 8 x 11 inches. Black & white line drawings, fun to color with colored pencils or crayons. This is the coloring book you should have had when you were a kid. Color the Rapunzel for a new society. She now has power tools, a roll of duct tape, and a bus pass! Paint outside the lines with Miss Muffet as she tells that spider off and considers a career as an arachnologist!

Girls are thinkers, creators, fighters, healers, superheroes, and kings.

¡Veintisiete páginas de diversión feminista! Este es un libro para colorear para cualquier edad y nunca puede uno ser demasiado grande. Las niñas pueden ser reyes ofrece una manera alegre y subversiva de examinar como los estereotipos de género que están en todos aspectos de nuestras vidas. Este libro ayuda a deconstruir la homogeneidad de la expresión de género en los medios infantiles, presentando imágenes más diversificadas que refuerzan los roles de género positivos para niñas.

Niñas son pensadoras, creadoras, luchadoras, curanderas y superhéroes.

One of the brilliant interiors - The page showing a young girl who traded in her Barbie for "something less destructive"/"algo menos destructivo."

I particularly love Jacinta's explanation of the title:

The title of this book is Las niñas pueden ser reyes: Libro para colorear (Girls Can Be Kings Coloring Book), inspired by Seondeok of Silla, a 7th-century Korean girl who became the first queen of Silla despite a misogynist uprising against her fueled by the motto “girls can’t be kings!” I learned of her from the incredible book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.

It's inspiring to see how powerful knowing real history that includes woman can be -- the story of Seondeok, told in one book, inspiring Jacinta's Spanish version of this book, and reaching out to all the readers (and colorers) to come!

The Spanish version of one of my favorite pages in the original: "Nobody wants to fight the patriarchy alone. Make friends."

I'm very excited about this coloring book—it's absolutely something I wish I'd had back when I was a little kid!

Add your review of "Las Niñas Pueden Ser Reyes" in comments!

Queer Kid Lit Inspiration from #LA19SCBWI

I love the SCBWI Summer Conference, and while I wasn't able to attend the whole event this year (a day-job conflict that I will make every effort to avoid happening again!) I did have some amazing moments.

The two that resonate the most strongly were from the same session, the LGBTQ and Allies Social I hosted on Friday night.

In the course of the discussion, I shared that one of my challenges as a creator of work for children and teens that includes LGBTQ characters and themes are the voices that tell me to make things less gay. Part of that I'm sure is internalized homophobia from my childhood. But part is external, the voices of well-meaning folks who want to see me succeed and think the way to do that is to have my work be not quite so... well, Queer. To pull back. To not stand out so much. And I hear it. Quite a bit.

I shared with the group that what I really need is a community of people who tell me the opposite. That my dream is to have a creative community that tells me, "Make it Gayer, Lee!" A creative community that urges me to take risks. To tell the stories I so deeply need to tell, and to push myself to make them as Queer as possible.

Bruce Coville was there, and in a conversation about defining success, we discussed his including a positive gay role model in The Skull of Truth. Which, I said, was really brave of him as it was such a breakthrough (it was published in 1997.)

And Bruce said, "I wasn't brave, I was cranky." He wasn't seeing positive representations of gay people in middle grade books. And so he decided to do something about it himself. He told us about losing a few school visits over it, but ultimately, "Saying what you want to say is way more important." Bruce said that sometimes, success can be defined in terms of "What barrier can I push?"

And then, at the end of the evening's session, illustrator Mara Williams showed me what she'd been working on in her sketchbook:

Thank you, Mara. And thank you, Bruce!

I'll get back to work pushing those barriers. And I'll make it gayer.

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee