A New Generation to Read Out Loud, Read Out Proud
By Lisa Forman, Founder of Pride and Less Prejudice
Having a queer daughter who struggled to come to terms with her sexuality, I’ve often thought about how her childhood could have been more LGBTQ-inclusive. When my two children were in preschool and early elementary school, I spent endless hours reading books to them; but as I reflect upon our favorite titles, I realize that I did not introduce my children to the diversity in books that I had hoped for.
Looking back, I realize that I didn’t have books about the LGBTQ community, families of color, or divorce. At the time, it wasn’t on my radar to normalize all these other identities, and to be fair, there probably were not as many titles out there in the late 90s and early 2000s as there are now. However, I did make the effort to have books in our personal library that reflected issues that were important to our family. During the holiday time, we always read Light the Lights by Margaret Moorman, a story about an interfaith family that was just like ours. Once my sister adopted her children, we read Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis, which speaks to themes of adoption. And when my brother-in-law passed away from cancer when my children were seven and ten years old, we read Where Do Balloons Go? by Jamie Lee Curtis. I chose to include these books in my children’s library because I did not think my kids would hear about interfaith families, adoption, and death and dying in their early years or at school. These were all topics I had hoped to normalize for my kids from a very young age.
Fast forward to when my kids were in middle and high school, I began to notice that my older daughter, Becca was very interested in TV shows with LGBTQ-inclusive storylines such as Glee, Pretty Little Liars, and Modern Family. With the help of those shows, she came out as queer, and I see now how having that representation helped her figure that out for herself. I often wonder what her life would have been like without that representation, especially because she didn't have any out LGBTQ people in her life to view as role models.
When I think about my own childhood, the first time I heard about someone being gay was my first cousin on my father’s side. There were 20+ cousins on that side of the family and everyone was so much older than I, but in my family, being gay was just matter of fact. Eventually, I found out my mother’s hairdresser was gay, and so was another cousin, and later on, even the boy I dated in high school! My parents always embraced LGBTQ people, so in turn, I just accepted it because my own parents normalized it for me.
But my daughter Becca never knew any LGBTQ folks in her childhood, the media was her lifeline. And the more I thought about that, the more I realized how much having LGBTQ-inclusive literature in the classroom would have helped her. If we could just get LGBTQ-inclusive books children’s books into the younger grades, starting with preschool, we could normalize this idea for all children, teachers, and parents, and help foster acceptance of the LGBTQ community.
After speaking to a queer second grade teacher about what resources she had used in her classroom, I began to do some research and see what kind of LGBTQ-inclusive books had been published for young children. There were many more than I ever imagined, but I eventually narrowed down the list to 14 books and began to ask some teachers I knew if they would like free LGBTQ-inclusive books for their classroom. I was happy to find many teachers who wanted to use the books, and I felt thrilled at the chance to support these teachers, many of whom did not have the funding from their schools to buy these books themselves.
Once I established our early pilot program, I started to tell friends what I was doing. One person that I have known for twenty years was very intrigued and responded, “You aren’t going to ask teachers here in town, are you? Parents will be furious that teachers are reading these stories without them knowing!” I started to explain how age-appropriate the stories were. Love Makes A Family by Sophie Beer is an inclusive board book, that celebrates one thing that makes every family a family. . . and that's LOVE, regardless of whether you have two dads, two moms, one parent, or even a grandparent raising you. She then continued to say, “I wish my daughter who is a second grade teacher could support you, but I wouldn’t want her to get in trouble for using these books.” Could she hear herself? What did she think she was saying to me about my own daughter and how she felt? Would she have acted differently if it were one of her own kids?
A month later, it was holiday time, and as a gift for my Italian Catholic sister-in-law, who was a Kindergarten teacher, I wrapped up the books, Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman, and All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. I prefaced the books with saying that lately I had been trying to find LGBTQ-inclusive books for young kids and thought it might be good to use in her class. I also added that they would be great books to share with my nephew, her 8-year-old son. Unfortunately, after seeing the books she seemed very uncomfortable and said, “Did you write these?” as she quickly turned them over in her lap so her son would not see. I laughed and said no. She quickly changed the subject and we never talked about the books again. The next time we saw them, my daughter asked her uncle if his son knew she was gay, and his response was, “We don’t even talk to him about liking girls. He is much too young!”
At that point I really started to think about who was teaching today’s youth, and whether they were aware of the books that were available to them. Throughout my time running Pride and Less Prejudice, I have found there are many teachers, both LGBTQ and allies, who had no idea that there are so many wonderful LGBTQ-inclusive books for this age group. And even for the ones who do know, they often do not have access to them with such limited school funds. It was experiences like these that made it crystal clear that I needed to push harder to make Pride and Less Prejudice a reality, and I wanted to place these books in as many classrooms as I could nationwide.
Since our launch in November 2019, we have raised over $20,000, and shipped more than 1,100 books to Pre-K to 3rd grade classrooms across the United States and Canada. In addition to providing free teacher resource guides and workshops, I hope that this blog will continue to be a source of support for our teachers and the LGBTQ community.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us in our mission so far, and to all of those who will continue to do so in the future.
