{"id":1311150,"date":"2019-06-07T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-08T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/cepeda-column-picture-book-offers-clearer-portrait-of-gender-identity\/"},"modified":"2019-06-07T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T05:00:00","slug":"cepeda-column-picture-book-offers-clearer-portrait-of-gender-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/cepeda-column-picture-book-offers-clearer-portrait-of-gender-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Cepeda column: Picture book offers clearer portrait of gender identity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CHICAGO \u2014 What I like best about the new children\u2019s picture book \u201cIt Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity\u201d is that there\u2019s no sad child who magically overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to have a happy ending.<\/p>\n

As a teacher for grades K-4, I read a lot of picture books with important messages about respect, understanding the people around us and just being nice to others. Usually when a book wants to teach kids about interpersonal distinctions, it doubles down on differences before illustrating how similar all humans are.<\/p>\n

In contrast, \u201cIt Feels Good to Be Yourself\u201d is light. Matter-of-fact. Positive. And as ultra-diverse as the city of Los Angeles, where author Theresa Thorn lives with her husband and three children, one of whom is a transgender girl. Thorn is also co-host of the \u201cOne Bad Mother\u201d podcast and co-author of the parenting book \u201cYou\u2019re Doing a Great Job! 100 Ways You\u2019re Winning at Parenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Feels Good to be Yourself,\u201d which is beautifully drawn by Atlanta-based illustrator and comic artist Noah Grigni, introduces us to Ruthie, an adorable brown-skinned, brown-eyed transgender girl. \u201cThat means when she was born, everyone thought she was a boy. Until she grew a little older \u2014 old enough to tell everyone that she\u2019s actually a girl,\u201d Thorn writes.<\/p>\n

From there we meet Ruthie\u2019s friends, who are cisgender (\u201ceveryone thought he was a boy, and as he grew older, it turned out everyone was right \u2014 he is a boy\u201d), nonbinary (which \u201ccan describe a kid who doesn\u2019t feel exactly like a boy or a girl\u201d) or have other ways to say who they are.<\/p>\n

We learn that \u201cwhether you feel like a boy, a girl, both, or neither, or if you describe yourself another way, that is your gender identity. Your gender identity might match what people thought you were when you were born. Or, it might not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, is this really the sort of thing that young children need to be exposed to?<\/p>\n

Absolutely.<\/p>\n

I work in a public-school district that has multiple students in early grades who are transitioning, or already have, to affirm their true gender identity.<\/p>\n

Plus kids see and hear about various gender expressions (\u201cwhich clothes you wear, how you style your hair, how you walk and talk\u201d) in popular music, on TV shows and even in the books their teachers read to them in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are a pretty good number of children\u2019s books that deal with gender identity at this point,\u201d Thorn told me in an interview. \u201cA lot of them were really nice, but what I felt was missing was something that could clearly lay out the concept of gender identity in a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thorn walked the fine line of creating a book that was too informational and, therefore, short on a narrative arc that entices children to stay engaged through to the end, and one in which the terminology threatened to derail the flow of the story.<\/p>\n

And once that was perfectly maneuvered, Thorn had to ensure that she was not inadvertently including judgmental language.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to say \u2018most people are like this, but one kid is like that,\u2019\u201d Thorn said. \u201cWith our own kid, when she transitioned, we never said \u2018You\u2019re different.\u2019 We said, \u2018There are lots of people like you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With other books her family owns, Thorn says she\u2019s had to circumvent story lines about being ostracized or bullied. \u201cI just skip over them. I don\u2019t need her thinking about this, there\u2019s plenty of time for her to confront that. I didn\u2019t want her to start out thinking she\u2019s the outsider.\u201d<\/p>\n

This will be less likely among children in the same age group as Thorn\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve taught in low-income schools that are majority African American and Hispanic, as well as affluent schools that are majority white. In each, the young students just accepted that different people have different feelings about their bodies \u2014 and any number of ways they like to dress or express themselves in those bodies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s older people \u2014 teachers, administrators, grandparents and other family members \u2014 who might be similarly understanding if they just comprehended the vocabulary around gender identity.<\/p>\n

Buy a copy of \u201cIt Feels Good to Be Yourself\u201d for family members, friends or other adults who, at heart, just need a simple way to learn about a newly visible portion of our population.<\/p>\n

My favorite passage will clarify any confusion: \u201cNo matter what your gender identity is, you are OK exactly the way you are. And you are loved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Esther Cepeda\u2019s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com<\/a>, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 What I like best about the new children\u2019s picture book \u201cIt Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity\u201d is that there\u2019s no sad child who magically overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to have a happy ending. As a teacher for grades K-4, I read a lot of picture books with important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 19:43:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}