Without <i>She</i> or <i>He</i>, in Pictures

In my role with the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Office of the Toronto District School Board, I'm often asked for recommendations of books that celebrate gender diversity. Increasingly, though there are picture books and young adult novels that I can suggest—there continues to be a lack of such books for readers in middle grades. One of the challenges in suggesting books is that teachers are often looking for one book that they can read aloud to address an issue that is happening in their class or for one book that they can add to their classroom selection, so they can feel that they have this diversity issue addressed. The thing about diversity is that it is never a one-book problem, and there is never a one-book solution. Diversity involves showing a range, and that means multiple books, celebrating multiple gender identities and expressions.Increasingly, the requests I get from primary classrooms are for books that show children who identify outside the gender binary. Often the children identify as “neither” or “both,” but some have created their own words to express their genders.Gender is already a known problem in North American picture books. Since at least 1972, repeated studies have documented that children's literature features more boys, both in their titles and as main characters than they do girls (see, for example, McCabe 2011; Weitzman et al. 1972. So, buying, reading, and sharing books that center on girls already feels like a step toward celebrating gender diversity. But what about central characters who are either never identified by gender or are left open to interpretation? There are no large studies that identify such characters, but here are four books that I like and use in schools, and which are currently in print.Comes in board-book and paperback form and is the story of Large putting Small to bed. Small is feeling “grim and grumpy” and doubts Large's love. In rhyming couplets, through every step of their bedtime routine, Large details that Large will always love Small “No Matter What.” Small and Large are foxes, depicted in a soft cartoon style. As an added bonus, neither character is gendered in this book, or assigned a familiar role. Nonparental caregivers and fathers are pictured far less often than mothers in children's books, and Large could be any one of these roles.What Makes a Baby is a tour of human reproduction told without sex or gender. It describes that some bodies have sperm in them, some bodies have eggs in them, and some bodies have a uterus, and that you need all three to make a baby. It asks questions of the child reader such as “Who was waiting for you to be born?” All of Fiona Smyth's images are bright and in a cartoon style. While the people are all in people shapes, they are shown in bright nonhuman colors (like orange, purple, blue, and green).This is part of a series of three books by COPA, Centre ontarien de prévention des agressions published last year. In all three, the main characters face some form of bullying, harassment, or negative behavior at school and talk about what they are experiencing with a supportive parent/caregiver who helps them strategize solutions that the children can put in place. Unlike most other children's books that include bullying, the bullying is never the focus of the story, strategizing and implementing a solution is. All the characters in all three books are brightly colored blobs.Toof is a small blue blob who lives with and is cared for by Sage. When Toof was small, Sage knit Toof a security blanket. When Toof starts school, of course, the blanket comes too. One student makes fun of Toof and rallies the others. The teacher intervenes and makes sure the children know this is not appropriate, but Toof still does not feel good. At home, Toof tells Sage, and they strategize together. Toof then brings the blanket to school in concealed ways, until the day the kids need a flag for their snow fort. Toof remembers Sage saying that “sometimes it takes being strong to be yourself” and mounts the blanket as a flag. The teaser tries to start a chant of “Baby, baby, baby” but is silenced by other kids and the blanket flies high.Pom is a small pink child with red hair. Pim is Pom's toy bunny. In this simple and clear text, Pom and Pim go on an adventure and experience bad luck and good luck, finding that often, with a little creativity, even things that are bad luck can be turned into good. This book is a translation from the original Swedish.All four books allow children to draft their own understandings of gender on the characters, allowing even children with nonbinary identities to see themselves reflected. If the norm in children's publishing were nonbinary characters, I would worry that this would mean an absence of femme characters, but when the selection is so small, I simply delight that they exist at all.

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