I would love to just talk about picture books. Writing them has been my job for the past several years, and a general appreciation for a cute story has turned into a deep awe for the art form. But in part because my early reader “Call Me Max,” an anodyne story about a young trans boy, was displayed onstage with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when he signed the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill into law, more often than not these days, I am asked to speak about book bans.
My early reader “Call Me Max,” an anodyne story about a young trans boy, was displayed onstage with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when he signed the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill into law.
Understandably so. An all-out assault on the First Amendment, that specifically targets a vulnerable population with very few rights, is an urgent issue with inextricable ties to much larger problems plaguing our world. Hundreds of books are read to jeers of derision in front of extremist right-wing activists, quietly pulled from library shelves and occasionally burned.
As a former school librarian, the first trans person to win a Newbery honor and a recipient of two Stonewall Book Awards, I repeatedly receive invitations to speak on panels or to talk to journalists. They tell me that I’m the “perfect person” to lend my perspective on this dire issue.
Picture books, no less than other kinds of literature, lend themselves to a lifetime of study. I’d rather give a talk similar to the keynote I once delivered that looked at “The Runaway Bunny” as a metaphor for trans identities and lives. I’d rather be interpolating the Frog and Toad stories with the details I gleaned about author Arnold Lobel’s life. I could talk for hours about what “The Giving Tree” has to teach us about love, relationships, art and life.
But I’m most often asked to address “What does it feel like to get a book banned?” or “Why do you think they want to ban your books?”
If you’re detecting a hint of weariness in my…
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