A Focus on the "T" in LGBTQ

Susan Kuklin

When Susan Kuklin gave her acceptance speech at Bank Street College of Education for the 2015 Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, she spoke of realizing, six years ago, that the "T" in LGBTQ was "underreported and undervalued." She thought it was time to give them a voice.

Kuklin approached New York's Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and their team put out a call for anyone willing to speak with Kuklin for her book project.

Kuklin said she believes, as the law professor and humanitarian Brian Stevenson believes, that, "Society needs to pay attention to the marginalized, to the bullied, to poverty, to suffering, to exclusion, to unfairness and to injustice." This part of identity is more challenging, Kuklin added. Transgender youth were bullied, and their suicide rate was high for so small a group. As she interviewed the six youth in her book, she says, "I saw that 'them' was 'us.'"

Her half-dozen subjects tell their stories with humor and poignancy; they tell of their challenges and their triumphs. They discuss their transitions with candor and compassion. Jessy spoke of noticing the difference in other people's responses toward him as a man versus when he had been perceived as a woman. He could take up more room on the subway without dirty looks--it's accepted for men, it's not for women. Christina describes attending her all-boy Catholic School as Matthew, dressed like a woman. At a panel at Bank Street College of Education's BookFest last fall, Christina said, "If I could survive that, I could survive anything."

Susan Kuklin serves as a conduit for extraordinary people whose voices might not otherwise be heard. She speaks of capturing their words, photographing their progress, and her fascinating process of making Beyond Magenta on KidLit TV.

Keeping Family Secrets

Alice Hoffman

When Alice Hoffman spoke with us about Nightbird recently in an interview for SLJ's Curriculum Connections, she talked about its origins as a story about the isolation that comes from secrets. For Twig Fowler, that secret involves a family curse that has rendered her older brother half-human, half-bird.

Q: Nightbird shares a melding of magic and realism that’s present in your books for young adults, Green Angel and Aquamarine, and your adult novels. What is it about that combination that compels you as a writer?

Alice Hoffman: My childhood reading was fairy tales, and even though they were magical, they felt the most real. In terms of what was happening emotionally and psychologically, even if the story was about a beast or a rose that wouldn’t die, there were truths there. That the magical and the real exist side by side makes sense to me. I always think of myself as a 12-year-old reader…[and] write the book that I want to read.

Q: Where did the idea of Nightbird come from?
AH: This story is about the isolation that comes from secrets. I think many kids know about family secrets, and they know they’re not supposed to discuss them.

Q: What was the inspiration of James’s curse? I thought of the Minotaur—because of his birthright, he’s confined to this half-man, half-creature body. It’s that idea of the sins of the father visited upon the son, isn’t it?
AH: The idea of a family curse, especially one that isn’t talked about, is ancient, whether from father to son or mother to daughter. It’s like the secret of the nursery: you know it even when you don’t know it.

Also, the monster in the family is a common mythological situation. Nightbird came to me as the story of a “monster’s” sister—one who knows that her sibling is not a monster. How you appear on the outside isn’t necessarily how you are inside. Kids at this age intrinsically know that.

Q: It appears that Twig’s mother moved to New York to escape the fact that everyone knows everyone’s business.
AH: Yes, but you carry your legacy with you. That’s what happened to her. I thought of this as a mother-daughter book…. It’s about understanding your parent a little bit [better]. You can never know your mother when she was younger. Twig’s mother, too, doesn’t really know Twig.

This is an excerpt from a longer interview first published in SLJ's Curriculum Connections.

Connecting to Nature

Interior from You Are My Baby: Garden

When spring arrives, nature's creatures come out. You Are My Baby: Garden by Lorena Siminovich (author and artist of last year's You Are My Baby: Farm) makes an ideal guide for toddlers eager to identify the animals, insects, and arachnids they encounter in the world around them. Naming them forges a connection between a child and the other beings in his or her world.

The thick corrugated pages of this intelligently designed book allow children to leaf through the larger pages featuring the adults or the smaller ones starring their babies nestled in this book-within-a-book, as their matching game expands to include the great outdoors. They begin to connect the creature they see in a tree, a bush, or on a path in the woods to the animals, insects and arachnids they've observed in these pages.

It's a terrific companion for a stroller ride or a drive in the country, to prompt toddlers--even before they can form the words--to point to the page that matches what they see on a branch or a grassy patch.

Early Steps toward Independence

Robin Page and Steve Jenkins create a model of how to present science for young children with their book My First Day. They start by telling children what they, as newborn babies, did on the first day. They then use the same format to describe what other creatures did on their first day--some achieve more than a human newborn, others even less (the Siberian tiger, for instance, is born with its eyes closed and remains completely dependent on its mother). 

Author and artist pick usually one, often surprising fact about that animal (or bug, in one case). A wood duck, for instance, jumps out of its nest and falls "a long long way" out of its nest into a pond, then paddles after its mother on its first day. Each illustration depicts the adult parent with the newborn, so children can see how the baby will look when it's grown.

Implicit in these snapshots of animals--many of which are independent in certain respects from the start (joining the herd, walking right away)--is that their parents (usually the mother, but in the case of Darwin's frog or the emperor penguin, the father) are never far from them. Jenkins's cut-paper collage in realistic colors and textures follows a similar visual design on the page, and keeps the focus on parent and offspring.

In addition to being an outstanding introduction to science, this book is ideal for starting a conversation about going away for day camp or starting preschool or kindergarten: If a child is feeling any anxieties about leaving home to go solo for part of the day or being in a new environment, his or her worries can bubble up in a safe way, through questions about how the animal parents reunite with their babies. Detailed notes in the back of the book help parents and caregivers answer some of the more probing questions.

Wordless Communication

Many parents teach their babies a few simple words in sign language, so the baby has a way of communicating what they need or want, even before they can speak. Joy Allen's Baby Signs, with its simple pastel pictures and step-by-step (wordless) instructions for 13 words, makes an ideal choice.

Just the other day, I was walking out of Bank Street College of Education with a colleague who had just picked up her 8-month-old baby from the Family Center. She gave her baby a piece of a banana. When little Lily finished her piece of banana, she made the sign for "more." What a powerful thing, at 8 months old, to be able to "say" what she needs.

A few simple signs as a tool to indicate what they want allows babies to express themselves from the get-go. They don't have to break into tears or wails of frustration. They may still, but they have other options. Nothing inspires confidence more than being understood, no matter how old we get.